


Network

by itsxandy



Series: The Fedora Verse [3]
Category: DCU - Comicverse, The Flash (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Community: yj_anon_meme, Crime Fighting, Drama, Gen, Organized Crime, Prompt Fic, feeling lazy so I'll just add more characters as they appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 52,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsxandy/pseuds/itsxandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally manages to make one or two new, slightly shady friends, but overall he mostly just gets dumped a lot by everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ah wow, so the two week break between the last part and this one kind of extended into a two-month thing. Uh. Sorry? Also, so my birthday was last week, and I [made a thing](http://itsxandy.tumblr.com/post/51322228029/speedster-formulas-theyre-tricky-even-if-the) if you guys missed it. I'm totally proud of it but don't know what to actually do with it. I think it'd make a cool cover or something, but... well, I don't know. Suggestions?
> 
> ...I'm also going to apologize in advance for the giant action scene and for cutting it up into pieces.

Wally wasn’t really sure what he expected out of another encounter with Robin. Anger, accusations, maybe threats. He was willing to risk it anyway for a chance to explain himself. He hadn’t meant to hurt Zoom. Not that badly. Not like that.

He did expect better promptness though. A more immediate reaction. By the fourth day when Robin finally opted to show up, Wally no longer on edge and had even already gotten around to setting up some rudimentary lab equipment. He didn’t have any samples of V9, but he did have a few vague ideas as to what the basic structure looked like. Who knew? Maybe he’d get lucky and somehow manage to find the right combination.

Sure.

“What is this?” a voice said from behind Wally.

Wally got up to his feet, turning around around to see Robin standing across the room with an unhappy expression on his face. Wally looked back at the table, a cheap thing he’d dragged in from a garage sale, where three apparatuses had been set up with three separate experiments.

“Only the worst attempts at Velocity ever,” Wally said, touching his hat to make sure it was pressed firmly down on his head. He untied the lab apron’s knot behind his neck and pulled it off.

Wally was thankful for the dim lighting. He didn’t feel comfortable with Robin the first time he brought him here, and even less so now that he was sure the sidekick was cross with him. “Can’t figure out what those people did to make it.”

“Are you using a formula similar to the one that gave you your powers?” Robin asked, and Wally knew immediately he was fishing for more information.

“Hah, no,” he said. He would’ve said no, regardless of whether Robin was on the mark or not, but in this case, it was true. Either way, his father had taken one of his earlier notebooks. The experiments had been more crude, less refined. Comparing his early versions with his later ones, the processes were nearly nothing alike.

Despite his evident curiosity, Robin didn’t move forward to approach him. Instead, he maintained the distance, standing still. Standing in front of the door. Or, more specifically, between Wally and the door. And he wasn’t budging.

Wally was ninety percent sure he had just sat his way into a trap.

“I really should’ve seen this coming, huh?” Wally said, feeling oddly disappointed by the somewhat expected turn of events. He’d had an idea, knew things couldn’t last, but the knowledge that he’d been right didn’t make him feel much better.

“Sorry,” Robin said, sounding only somewhat apologetic. “It just wasn’t working out.”

They both knew the jig was up. Robin hadn’t moved an inch, standing between Wally and the exit. Move forward, and he’d give Wally the opening he needed to escape. Wally wasn’t going to be able to leave without a fight.

Wally glanced to the chemistry apparatuses beside him. The bunsen burner kept his experiment at a steady heat, jerry rigged to run on a rubber tube and a propane tank. Robin immediately noticed, his attention darting from the propane tank to the empty space behind Wally.

And then Wally realized it had been dumb of him to assume that they were in a sort of stalemate.

Wally spun on his heel, spotting a distortion in the air floating, the figure of someone who had snuck up behind him and intended to take him by surprise. In retaliation, he grabbed the burner, yanking the heating device loose of the rubber hose. Before the flame could go out, he held the tip of the burner against the now-free end of the tube that was still connected to the propane tank

It sparked. Wally ran.

He had angled for the narrow space between Robin and the door, but when Robin took a step back to try and block his path, it hadn’t come as a surprise. He plowed straight through, tackling Robin through the way he’d come in.

The tank behind them erupted into flames, and Wally felt the force of the explosion push him forward further, turning his running tackle into a tumble with Robin. They rolled onto the ground, little bits of broken glass, wood, and debris pelting Wally’s back. He looked down at Robin beneath him, struggling to regain his bearings from the impact.

While Robin was laying there, temporarily stunned, Wally wanted to say something. It had been fun while it lasted. Not this time. Wally struggled for a moment to find the right thing to say.

“It shouldn’t have turned out this way,” he finally said.

He got maybe five steps out when something struck the back of his shoulder with bruising force, knocking Wally off-balance. He stumbled forward and landed on his side, stunned by the sudden attack. The arrow that had struck him was lying on the ground not too far away. The tip was blunted, lacking the point of traditional arrows, but if there was anything Wally had learned from past experiences with vigilante archers, the arrow was bound to explode or something.

Curiously enough, it hadn’t gone off yet, but Wally wasn’t going to wait around to see what would happen.

As he ran, he spotted a familiar face. Garth, from the museum, stood in his path between him and the gated exit. As the distance between them rapidly closed, Garth’s arms began to glow ominously with power. Wally wasn’t interested in waiting for the Atlantean to finish his incantations.

“No dice,” Wally said, pushing the Garth to the side before he could cast his Atlantean hocus pocus. He continued running toward the gate, pushing himself a little faster to make up for the split second detour with Garth. His shoulder ached, but Wally was sure it would amount to nothing more than a bruise, and with his powers, bruises rarely ever lasted more than a day or two.

Running through the gate, Wally looked over his shoulder. He could still spot the low smolder of flame from the small propane explosion and tiny silhouettes gathered around the glow. The explosion probably counted for the general disarray of the attempt to catch Wally. Too concerned with trying to help their own to pay too much attention to the target.

...He hoped the damage hadn’t been too bad.

His experiment had definitely been ruined, but he hadn’t really been expecting much in the way of results anyway.

Wally only began to slow down once he was several blocks away from the scene. He needed to think, to focus on what he needed to do next. He’d spent the past few days in a listless lull, retreating to the now-ruined hideout whenever he wasn’t keeping Hunter company. He hadn’t known what to do, had been hoping for a chance to speak with Robin and trying to get scraps of information from him. Without Piper guiding his way, he didn’t know how else to investigate V9.

Robin didn’t have his back any more. That was understandable, even if it was a little disheartening. A lot disheartening. The thought of working on the right side of the law had had its appeal, but of course the arrangement was doomed the moment he broke Zoom’s leg. After all, the team was angry and he was a thief. Damn the consequences; he wasn’t interested in facing them.

Wally was on his own on this one, and he couldn’t wait around for someone else to tell him what to do anymore.

He hadn’t set up much in the way of hideouts, which was actually a bit lucky of him. He’d have to abandon any made under the same name as this one; no doubt, Robin had already ran this name through the database. This fake identity had been burned. Thankfully, he had others.

As for V9, he had to take the initiative. There had to be something he could do. Anything.

An idea formed in Wally’s mind, a possibility that could turn things around, but his thought process was interrupted. The hair on the back of his neck rose with the eerie sensation that something...

Wally dove forward, rolling out of the way as a figure dropped from out of the sky. The cement cracked under a pair of boots that now stood on the spot where Wally had been just a split second ago.

“Are you trying to kill me?” Wally yelped, stumbling backwards away from the berserker with the S-shield emblazoned on the front of his chest. He looked like Superman, he wore the insignia, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of behavior Wally expected to see of the big blue boy scout.

Not bothering with a response, the teenager darted forward. Aside from the Flash and Zoom, he was faster than anyone else Wally had ever encountered before. His approach was different, though. Less streamlined, not as light on his feet. When he ran, he was like a stampede, moving in a mad rush and liable to trample over anything in his way.

Wally didn’t have much trouble avoiding his swinging fists, always managing to stay just out of range. He was fast, probably the fastest the team had, now that Zoom had been ‘decommissioned’. But he definitely wasn’t fast enough to handle Wally.

“You want to play? Let’s play tag,” Wally said, daring to step within arm’s reach of the super-teenager, pat his shoulder, and run. He ducked underneath the outstretched arms and ran, the Kryptonian following not too far behind.

He could’ve left his pursuer in the dust, but Wally didn’t want to lose track of him. He’d escaped the team’s line of sight, and they still managed to follow him. Supposedly, Superman had powers beyond flight, superstrength, and superspeed, and while Wally didn’t place the greatest trust in tabloid-based rumors, the _Daily Planet_ had confirmed that his senses had been enhanced.

This younger version of Superman didn’t seem to display his predecessor’s flight capabilities, but there was nothing wrong with displaying a little bit of extra caution when you were being chased by a pissed off human freight train. Human-ish.

Wally doubted he was being followed by his scent. If the Kryptonian had enhanced scent, enough to follow Wally throughout the city, he was screwed anyway. It was just a matter of following his scent home. No. It had to be something else.

Wally sped up, sharply turning corners, breaking the sightline and watched as Superboy slowed down to a stop in the middle of the empty street.

“Psst,” Wally hissed, and it was all that the Kryptonian needed to hone in on Wally’s location. He was immediately chasing down Wally again. Definitely enhanced hearing. Which meant as long as Wally was running, Superboy could probably figure out his location by the sound of his footsteps alone.

He upped the speed. Let the hero hear him. Wally pushed himself faster and faster until Superboy was out of sight. There had to have been half a city between them by the time he finally began to slow, rolling down to a stop by an empty building, closed down for the night. It was quiet, which made it perfectly private, but Wally wasn’t sure how far the Kryptonian’s superhearing ranged and if he’d be able to pick out the sound of his heartbeat from everything else. He closed his eyes and knelt down on the ground, a hand against his chest as he struggled to control his breaths.

Slow, deep breaths. He did his best to relax, breathing in slowly until his lungs were full, holding it for several seconds, and then letting it out slowly. It made his chest ache, his body trying to respond to its physiological need for oxygen. This was supposed to be the quickest way to slowing down one’s heartbeat, but it was a little problematic when Wally’s body burned through oxygen like fuel.

A fuel tank. He thought back to whoever had been standing nearby him when he set alight the propane tank. He hoped it hadn’t been too bad. He’d been too focused on escape to consider the other possible repercussions, and he didn’t like the idea of having hurt a second hero on top of Zoom in so short a time.

Or having hurt any hero at all, Wally mentally amended.

After a few moments, his heartbeat was no longer jackrabbiting in his chest. He felt slightly lightheaded, but he was doing better at ‘controlling’ his body’s instinctive need for air. His body functioned differently from how it had before the experiment; it still had trouble remembering that.

Wally climbed back up to his feet, a little lightheaded but otherwise—

—cringing in pain at the sudden sharp jolts resonating up from his arm throughout the rest of his body.

 _What_?

Apparently, he hadn’t been as home-free as he’d assumed. Wally spun around, managing to dodge several more small yellow blasts. Darting high in the air, wings a blur, was a yellow and black speck. Human in shape but not in size. She had to have been smaller than the length of Wally’s own forearm.

Wally didn’t have much time to wrap his mind around the anomaly, focusing on running again. Those stings packed a punch, and his arm felt half-numb in an unpleasant way, as if he’d slept on it wrong and it had fallen asleep. With the sudden complete loss of hand dexterity, Wally could only count himself lucky that it hadn’t struck his leg.

How did the rest of the team track him when the Kryptonian most likely hadn’t had the opportunity to get a fix on him yet?

Just four minutes later, he found himself nearly entrapped within a sort of glowing force field, and Wally had to consider himself lucky that he hadn’t immediately fled for home as well. They couldn’t have just been following him by their senses alone.

He didn’t know what to do.

Which made what to do next all the more obvious.


	2. Chapter 2

Phoning a friend was hard enough to do when one’s arm was still half-numb from a sting with unknown medical effects, so Wally gave himself a mental pat on the back for managing it while still running two hundred meters per second.

“ _Piper!_ ” Wally shouted into the phone, trying to be heard over the roaring wind that was drowning out the words on the way to the receiver. 

“ _Kid?_ ” Piper guessed, sounding confused by what must’ve sounded like terrible reception. Wally slowed down to a stop. He couldn’t stay still for too long. He was pretty sure he was being stalked by an invisible plane loaded with crime fighting vigilantes. 

“You know how you guys are always getting on my case about taking a stand against the Flash and Zoom?” Wally said. He looked over his shoulder. The Super-teen had been following him like a Terminator robot on the rampage, practically smashing through any obstacle that stood in their way with a balance between strength and speed that just wasn’t fair. “I think that was a terrible idea.”

“Are they after you?”

“No, but their friends are,” Wally said. He tried not to sound too pitiful, but it didn’t help that he was breathless from running or that, well yes, he was beginning to feel really pathetic, constantly calling Piper for help. “If there’s anything you can do, that’d be great. I’ll be, um, circling around downtown.”

“Headcount?”

“There’s Robin, an archer, an Atlantean, what looks like a small version of Superman, and um... a fairy?” Wally edged toward the corner and glanced around it.

“A  _what_?”

“I don’t know, I’m describing what I saw. It was a, uh, a little person with wings, okay?” he said. “Not a quote-unquote ‘real fairy’—” 

“Save your breath for running, because I’m not listening to you rant about fairies,” Piper said. “Now is  _so_  not the time to be talking about setting up a model of scientific inquiry to disprove the existence of magical little people. Why are you even having problems with this lineup? No one you mentioned should even be able to keep up with you?”

“I don’t know. And they just. Keep. Coming. Whenever I think I’ve lost them and I start to slow down, they just show up. If I try and go home, they’re probably going to follow me back,” Wally complained. He looked toward the sky, scanning for anything that didn’t quite look right until he found a slight inconsistency, a distortion in the sky’s pattern. “They have a  _plane_. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. I am outrunning an invisible  _plane_.”

“I know what’s going on now.”

“ _Help me_ ,” Wally hissed, beginning to run again as the camouflaged ship began to fly his way. 

“As always. Head to 4th Street near the bar. We’ll meet you there.”

“...We?” Wally echoed, but Piper had already hung up on him. Great. The other Rogues were going to chip in and probably demand some compensation, too.

As much as their help—or eyewitnessing—was unwanted, Wally wasn’t going to turn down an Stay Out of Jail for Fee card either. It was just a little unfortunate that the location of Wally’s backup was also in the direction the invisible plane was coming from. Wally managed to keep an eye on the plane the entire time as he tried to run a wide arc around it, but as he ran, it changed trajectories to meet him. It didn’t matter how far away he ran, where he ducked and hid, it changed directions to pursue him every time. With Wally’s attention focused on the skies, he wasn’t on the lookout for the human train wreck

It came from the right, while Wally had been distracted by the plane on his other side. The first thing he was aware of was being struck by a force heavy enough to knock the breath out of his lungs and a pair of arms wrapped around his waist. The next thing he knew, he was being bodychecked into a wall, and the Kryptonian was backing away from him, apparently sure Wally wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon. 

And he was right. Wally was pretty sure he had just blacked out for a moment, and every time he tried to stand back up, he found himself sliding back down the wall. He looked up at the teenager, who glared down without an ounce of pity. Not that Wally really expected any, for all the trouble he’d given them. 

“Ow,” Wally muttered. “I guess I’m it.”

For a moment, the glare eased off for a minute in confusion as to what Wally meant, only to return in full force to realize it wasn’t any sort of cryptic message, just a reference to the earlier joke about playing tag. 

“You think this is some sort of  _game_?” he demanded. 

“Of course not. There’s no quit option,” Wally said, though the act of scoffing made his bruised ribs ache. Fear began to uncurl in his chest, expanding and filling his lungs. He sensed it, knew it was there, but the feeling just wouldn’t register, as if dulled by the blow to his head. He wasn’t close enough, just a few blocks away from the site where he was supposed to meet up with Piper, and he hadn’t made it. He could  _hear_  Piper’s motorcycle. “Though, man, if only I could start a new game...”

It was supposed to be an inert comment. One not meant to offend nor butter the vigilante up, but the neutrality of it all was probably what actually set him off: the fact that Wally, in his dazed stupor, seemed so unconcerned by the present. Combined with his current mood, the Kryptonian looked ready to throttle him. 

Ready because he took several threatening steps toward Wally; maybe to hit him or grab him or pick him up and throw him against the wall again. But he never got past the first few steps. 

A blueish white light enveloped the raging Kryptonian and filled Wally’s vision. Wally winced at the brightness, raising an arm to cover his eyes and rub away the spots in his vision. By the time he’d lowered his arm and saw the teenager encased in ice, he realized what had happened. 

“Cold?” Wally croaked, finally slowly pushing himself up against the wall. He stumbled over to the frozen crime fighter, slowly shaking off his clumsiness. The numbness that clouded his mind had spread, yet Wally could feel the fear more distinctly now. “Is he dead?”

Captain Cold stood there with his cold gun still smoking. Or, rather, blowing condensed, cold air out the tip of the barrel.

“It’s a cold gun not an ice gun,” he said. “It doesn’t shoot ice, it stops motion.”

“Like real, honest-to-god, zero animation?” Wally said, understanding the concept but not quite able to wrap his mind around how the guy still wasn’t dead either way. A question for another time, preferably a time where Wally wasn’t reeling from a likely concussion. Maybe it was a Kryptonian thing. 

“Superboy’s alive, but he won’t be moving anytime soon,” Cold said, and as fate had it, just to prove Wally’s good fortune false, a fissure formed in the ice, cracking audibly.

“Piggy back or bridal style?” Wally asked the Rogue.

Before the Rogue could say “don’t you fucking dare, you little shit”, Wally opted not to wait a whole second for Cold to protest and for ‘Superboy’ to escape his frozen confinement. Wally ran straight into him, using his speed and momentum to hoist Cold up, and he ran as fast as he could with an angry two hundred pound man swearing at him in his arms. Which, at least, was still pretty fast, despite having spent the past thirty minutes sprinting across the city from crime fighters, half of whom he couldn’t even see coming.

“Cold, I think we need to talk about your eating habits,” Wally wheezed. For all Wally’s efforts in their quick escape, he ended up with an arm in his face. His grip on the man’s parka slipped, and he dropped his boss on the ground. Wally would’ve probably winced and laughed nervously if it weren’t for the fact that he’d been running a hundred meters per second and now had a man-sized speed bump underfoot.

Wally tripped. 

He tripped and by the time he stopped rolling, he was halfway down the block, dazed, confused, and angry at the world. 

“Nice landing.”

Wally stared up at Piper, who stood over him with an amused expression. “It would’ve been even better if someone had just  _cooperated_ ,” he said, loud enough for Cold to hear. He got a distant “fuck you!” in response. 

Wally reached for the offered hand, and Piper pulled him up. The older Rogue reached down, picking up Wally’s fallen hat, and dropped it back on top of Wally’s head with a little pat. “Don’t want to lose that,” he said, and then he looked over at Captain Cold, who was climbing back up to his feet. “Hey, Len.”

“You better have a good excuse for calling me out here,” he growled as he walked over to them. “It’s a Wednesday night.”

“Didn’t realize it was a school night for you too,” Wally retorted. As per usual, Cold ignored the jibe.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Zoom chased me, and I fought back a little too hard. Now his friends are chasing me in an invisible plane. It doesn’t matter how far or how fast I run, they keep finding me, and I can’t stop running,” Wally said and, as on cue, he spotted the distortion in the sky again. “Oh, there they go. I think we have thirty, maybe forty seconds. Gotta—”

“Run?” Piper finished for him, giving Wally a slightly exasperated look..

“Are you going to make me feel guilty over this?” he said with a small pout.

“I already called the whole team,” Piper said. When Wally looked between Piper and Cold. “Okay, small turn out, but there’s a pretty decent chance they’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“I’m not sure standing around and  _waiting_  is exactly the way to go,” Wally tried.

“Rogues don’t run,” Cold said.

“And sometimes they die horribly,” he sighed, shoulders slumped, but he fought his impulse to flee on the spot.

“ _Hey_ —” Cold snapped angrily, but Piper smoothly cut in to avoid an argument.

“I know you’re a big fan of the heroes, Kid, but even a slowpoke like you should have figured out by now that our team actually handles themselves pretty well,” Piper said. 

“What makes you think I’m a fan?”

“I see red and yellow, and I don’t think that’s the flag of China,” Piper said, dipping his head to the side and sending Wally’s socks a pointed look.

“They were a gift,” Wally snapped, his pants material bunched in his fists. He wished he could tug them down a bit further to cover up his ankles a bit better, but it would’ve been pointless.

“We’ll wrap this up, take them down, make sure they can’t follow us. Things go south, we’ll meet up three blocks down from the usual place,” Cold said.

“Cover me,” Piper said immediately, and Wally did a doubletake. 

“Why doesn’t the guy who actually runs fast take the lead on this one?” Wally muttered, catching earplugs as Piper tossed them to him. 

“Because the guy who runs fast couldn’t take them on and had to call his only friend for help in the first place,” Piper said, not putting up with any of Wally’s usual backtalk at the moment. 

Wally wasn’t completely sure what Piper meant by ‘covering’ him. Protect him? How was he supposed to do that? And what was Piper up to, that he couldn’t watch his own back? Cold seemed to understand what was going on. Or, at the very least, he was keeping a straight enough face to fool Wally. He and Piper didn’t exchange another word, apparently already prepared for what was to come, the fight they were going to have on his hands. 

Wally couldn’t stop fretting as he put on his earplugs. What was he supposed to do, exactly?

“Don’t let us down, Kid!” Piper called out to him as a reminder, all three Rogues staring skywards as a number of figures already began to descend from the ship. “We don’t have backup!”

“Yeah, yeah, no pressu—”

Wally didn’t get to finish his sentence, cut off by a screech that startled him enough to physically throw him off balance. Beside him, Piper blew on his flute, its shriek amplified by his sonic technology. Almost immediately, several of the heroes dropped out of control from the sky, the first one being Superboy, whose impact with the ground left a cracked impression on the ground. With his hands clamped over his ears, he looked up to see several other teammates going down. 

No, not just teammates. The ship itself was on the move again, making haphazard patterns in the sky. Other vigilantes made more graceful landings, but Superboy, despite all the pain his superhearing must’ve been costing him, managed to dive forward and catch one of them as she fell, losing her camouflage in mid-air.

Wally didn’t bother going after either one of them, as they appeared the most incapacitated by Piper’s clash of notes.

The earshattering notes brought nearly the entire team and their ship down. It was more than Wally had been able to do, he had to give him that. It also put a giant target on Piper’s back, and Wally found himself picking the older Rogue up, carrying him out of the way of several projectiles. 

“ _Put me down_!” Piper immediately ordered, the sound of his flute distorted by Wally’s running. “The telepath’ll gain her bearings.”

Wally put him down almost immediately, and Piper instantly continued playing his music, still off kilter and out of tune and disorienting to the unobstructed ear. Wally readjusted his own earplugs before moving on to those who had attacked Piper in the first place, Robin and the small girl, as tall as Wally’s forearm was long and dressed in yellow and black. With her wings, she resembled a bee or a wasp of some sort.

The bee girl was trading beams of light with Captain Cold. As she darted in the air, dodging his cold beams, she fired back, looking for a better angle around the wall of ice he had created before him. Beside the bee girl, Robin pulled out a sharp edged throwing disc that lit up at an ominous pace. A sort of explosive, Wally would’ve bet, to get rid of Cold’s protective wall. 

Wally ran up behind Robin and flipped his cape over his head. Robin, to his credit, was barely slowed down by his cape, detaching it almost instantly, and Wally caught a glimpse of some sort of spark on the cape, withdrawing his hand back just in time to avoid being shocked by the hidden trap. Regardless of Robin’s preparations, the cape-flip bought him a second’s worth of time. 

He grabbed the disc in Robin’s hand, throwing it haphazardly nearby the bee girl, who flitted away the moment she realized Robin’s explosive device was glowing below her hovering feet. She didn’t fly far enough. The force of the explosion was just enough to throw off her flight patterns, sending her tumbling through the air. 

Robin ducked forward to avoid getting caught in his own cape, which fell uselessly to the ground, and twisted around to meet Wally in one practiced motion. He kicked Wally’s chest, propelling himself away and pushing Wally backwards, throwing a pair of smoke grenades at Wally’s feet. 

Wally coughed, and ran out of the smoke, his eyes stinging after contact. A mild tear gas must’ve been mixed in it, but Wally didn’t have much time to waste on contemplating the contents of the smoke bomb. Garth had managed to make it across the street toward Piper, the only Rogue keeping the near-unstoppable Kryptonian and the telepath from a warpath. 

Like with Robin, Wally ran up behind Garth too, grabbing him by the ponytail and kicking the back of his knee. Garth fell, but as he turned around, the Atlantean didn’t look all too bothered by his fall. As he spun around to meet Wally, a look of triumph in his eyes, Wally realized something had gone wrong. The air around him glowed, and Wally realized he’d been trapped inside a glowing sphere. Wally pounded a fist against the surface. 

“I have heard your kicks pack a punch. Can you manage that level of strength without space to run?” Garth asked coolly. He had a point. Wally was a combination of both a short- and long-range fighter. He didn’t use any weapons, which meant he’d be up close and personal to anyone he fought, but he needed the distance to pick up enough momentum and and make an impact. Without the brute force, Wally was relying on skill, luck, and experience, which he really didn’t have. He ducked out of the way of Garth’s first two clumsy swipes, but the second caught his arm, and Wally found himself screaming as a jolt of electricity ran through him. 

He knew this trick. The one Arsenal’s partner used. Arsenal’s partner was an Atlantean. He had moved so quickly and so well, as if he had lived on land his entire life. Garth, not so much. 

He was slow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, in a few language, roadbumps are called dead cops. Also, shoutout to [the best Rogues blog on tumblr](http://gorogues.tumblr.com/post/34138857640/the-rogues-dont-run-and-also-sometimes-they-die).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently we’re calling my update days Wally West Wednesdays. Or we’re calling Wednesdays Wally West Wednesdays and my fic just happens to update on Wednesdays. Either way. Happy WWW.
> 
> Anyway, is it weird to respond to every most of the comment I get? I mean, there's no way to privately respond, and it feels like false advertisement if someone looks at this story and sees a huge amount of comments and goes OH WOW THAT NUMBER OF COMMENTS IS SO HIGH I'M GOING TO READ THIS" when, really, half of the comments are me rambling. Should I cut back on them?

Wally broke free of Garth’s grip. The paralyzing electricity reduced to painful stings, and Wally looked down at the outstretched fingers, fascinated by individual strands of electricity that broke as he backed away a little further. 

The entire world was slow. No, it was always slow, but in this case, it was like they were barely moving at all, just an inch at a time. The last time Wally had been electrified, he’d hit a new level of speed then too.

Wally didn’t question his luck and increased speed any further; he took advantage of it. Free of Garth’s grip, he grabbed Garth’s wrists, carefully minding the glowing streaks on Garth’s skin in case he was shocked again. Wally dragged Garth’s arms to either side of him, leaving the rest of Garth exposed. It seemed downright cheap to hit someone who wasn’t even moving, but, well, he could avoid the face at least. He didn’t want to leave Garth with brain damage or anything. 

A few bruised ribs were probably preferable, and Wally kept punching and hitting until the Atlantean went down, slumped against the side of the sphere. Wally glanced at the wall of the sphere, touching it again. He wasn’t getting out of this one, not by himself. Piper, standing just feet away, knew he was trapped inside, unable to get out, but there was little he could do, fending off Robin and dodging his strikes and tools. He was having a difficult time, but Piper’s abilities were useful, disorienting Robin, throwing him off his groove. The closer Robin stood to Piper, the source of the cacophony, the more pain he must’ve been in. Wally was impressed Robin risked coming so close. 

And then, the sphere disappeared. First things first, Wally ran forward and grabbed Robin, taking him by the belt, easier to access now that the cape was gone, and he ran forward like he did weeks ago when he first met Weather Wizard. He ran two wide circles with Robin and intended to do one more when his grip on the utility belt suddenly felt much lighter. He looked down at his hand, which was still clutched to a part of it—no, not a part of it, apparently just the grappling gun—and then at Robin, who was still flying through the air in what felt like slow motion, but still considerably further away from Piper. Well, it had mostly been his intention, anyway. 

Wally looked around for the spherical force field and and caught sight of it it as it was still forming, reappearing around another vigilante that he had somehow missed earlier. 

Rocket. 

Of course it was her. The hero from Dakota that he had seen not too long ago at the chemical convention in the museum. Everything was still moving in slow motion. She had erected the shield around herself to protect herself from the cold beam feet away from her. Wally watched in morbid curiosity as the beam passed straight through, uninterrupted by the force field and struck Rocket, freezing her in mid-scream.

With everything at its slower pace, sound seemed a few pitches lower. Piper’s screeching music no longer pierced his eardrums, though he could still feel the vibrations in his bones and through the earplugs. With the volume he was playing at, Wally wasn’t entirely surprised to see a few people beginning to gather and witness the fight. Rocket’s scream was also a pitch lower than most women’s, but Wally couldn’t find much humor in that. He could still hear the noises beginning to sharpen in pitch again, a sign that his boosted speed was starting to run out. 

Unsure what to do, Wally ran back toward Cold, stooping slightly to check the cold gun. He didn’t know how it worked or what its settings were at, but it didn’t seem to be on its highest setting, which was good, at least. 

Except Rocket was still frozen solid in ice and falling to the ground. 

As Wally ran back, he grabbed Superboy and dragged the Kryptonian along with him and underneath Rocket, who was only feet from shattering against the ground. Superboy still possessed some superspeed, even if it wasn’t comparable to Wally’s, and he watched as the Kryptonian’s eyes widened and then began to turn to focus on Wally. 

Wally didn’t bother waiting for him to turn his head, running away again, back to Cold again. In the time it had taken for Wally to drag Superboy over to catch Rocket and back, his Rogue leader had now focused his attention on Wally. He could practically feel the accusation and suspicion through the sunglasses, but Wally paid it little mind, because the bee girl was taking advantage of Cold’s distraction to strike him up close with her stings. He swatted her out of the way, and his boosted speed ran out. 

“Kid!” Cold pointed over Wally’s shoulder, and Wally turned around just in time to see Piper struck down by an arrow, letting out a large, high pitched screech before his flute fell silent. Wally’s ears rang, despite the noise protection he’d had. He looked at Superboy, who set down Rocket in her frozen block of ice, no longer cringing or curled in pain from the sharp sounds. And then Wally turned again to see the girl Superboy had caught from the sky, the only one he hadn’t seen in action yet. 

The telepath. 

Immediately, the situations reversed, and Wally felt as if his own head was being ripped apart, not by a sound, but by an agonizing presence in the back of his mind. Wally and Cold screamed and groaned in pain, falling to their knees. 

It hurt. His head ached, as if it were being split in two and was spilling forth all sorts of information—inane things. He’d forgotten to turn in his homework. His team was going to get caught because of him. Not his team. Piper and Cold. The rest of his team hadn’t bothered to show. At least he kept Rocket from being shattered into a million pieces on the pavement. Last week’s dinner was curry. He wondered if it was still good. This wasn’t his first time seeing the girl. Earlier this night, she’d been behind him in camouflage. Good to see she hadn’t been hurt by the exploding propane tank. Not like he’d accidentally hurt Hunter. 

Piper and Cold were going to be caught because of him.  _He_  was going to get caught. Maybe he deserved it. 

Fire. 

It was hot, and Wally snapped out of his painful trance and looked around in confusion. 

Everything. Was. On. Fire

“What the hell?” Wally frantically skimmed the area. The ground, the  _pavement_ , was literally on fire, which really shouldn’t have been possible, but it was. Maybe some sort of accelerant. 

“Heard you needed help!” Top said. Behind him, he spotted Robin and the bee girl on the ground. The Top stood with his arms outstretched on either side of him like he was going in for a hug, but he simply stood there with a wide grin, as if he expected praise and gratitude for his timely entrance. He didn’t get it. Wally was too distracted by the fact that he was surrounded by hellfire. 

“Changed my mind!” Wally shouted, watching Heat Wave light up the streets in horror. “Don’t want it!”

He saw Superboy and Garth running at Heat Wave, and for a moment, he was tempted to let them take care of the pyromaniac because this was completely insane, but Heat Wave was his  _teammate_. Plus, Cold still seemed to be giving Wally the stink eye. He had to have seen something, when Wally had used Superboy to break Rocket’s fall and stopped her from being shattered into bits. 

The ground rumbled, shaking beneath Wally’s feet until it began to crack into large chunks, and water began to rise from the fissures, leaking through to the surface like an open wound, The water glowed in unison with the patterns on Garth’s arms. To Garth’s credit, he had enough attention to spare from his Atlantean trickery to notice Wally. 

The Atlantean braced himself for the attack, bringing two streams of water up over his shoulder to form a watery torrent between himself and the speedster. 

Wally ran past him. 

He had his reservations attacking one of the few people present who would probably be able to put the pavement out. Plus, Garth didn’t seem like too much of a threat, compared to the ball of rage beyond him, jumping out of the flames and looking ready to rip someone’s head off—just as soon as he set the telepath down, out and away from the dangers of the flames. Wally was courteous enough to allow Superboy that much. His head still ached from the psychic onslaught, but as much as his brain appreciated the relief from the telepathic attack, his conscience wasn’t interested in letting her burn. 

Any of the subtle gentleness Superboy showed the telepath as he carried her to safety disappeared the moment he set her down. He spun around and ran straight toward Heat Wave, straight through the fire, with all the self-control of a raging berserker. 

Wally wasn’t stupid enough to tangle with Superboy in this state, not when he looked ready to tear his enemies by the limb. With a silent apology, Wally held up the grappling gun he had stolen from Robin only minutes ago, which had, until now, been resting idly on his belt. He never shot one of these before, but at this range, Wally couldn’t miss. Just as Superboy was about to completely breach the flames and reach Heat Wave—the only force keeping the telepath from ripping into their minds a second time—Wally pressed the button that launched the grappling hook. 

Wally had initially intended to just shoot Superboy with the grappling hook and just run away with him on leash, fighting superstrength and invulnerability with speed and momentum. It latched onto Superboy, but with an almost unnoticeable click, the grappling hook began to rewind, drawing the rope back into the device, leaving Wally with no choice but either to let go of the hook and give his new souvenir up or let himself get half-dragged into tackling Superboy. 

He chose the latter, half-flying and half-running through the air and hitting him with enough force that it dislodged Superboy from the grappling hook and sent him flying halfway across the street. 

Dazed from the impact, Wally looked down at the grappling hook and decisively clipped it back onto his belt. “Hook, line, and sinker,” he nodded appreciatively. Wally looked back up just as a beam of light struck Superboy, enveloping him in ice a second time that day. 

He glanced back and saw Captain Cold watching his back, more in the literal sense than anything else. He wondered if the Rogue had noticed him running right past Garth. He probably did, because Cold had taken care of the Atlantean himself. Garth was unconscious on the ground, surrounded by frozen streams of water that did little to stop the flames from creeping up on his unconscious body. 

With only the slightest bit of hesitation, Wally jogged over to Garth, bodily dragging him further away from the flames. 

Cold wasn’t the only one giving Wally a dirty look now. Top and Heat Wave were staring at him too, now. He wasn’t sure what Heat Wave was thinking; it was hard to read his expression when he was completely covered in his fire proximity suit. Top, on the other hand, looked downright scandalized by Wally’s actions.

“What are you doing?” he said angrily. 

“Damage control!” Wally snapped back. “Think! Who’s missing? Why did these guys spend the entire night hunting me down? They are  _pissed_  at me. You take one down, and their friends come after you in droves, exactly like you guys are doing right now. We keep this up, and we’re going to have them and all their mentors on our case!” Before anyone else could speak up, Wally raised his hand cautiously. “Wait...”

Hunter’s  _team_  was after him. Wally’s mind flashed back the very first time he had met them. There was Garth, there was Robin, there was... 

Artemis, the archer, and she had already struck Piper down earlier. 

By now, with Wally’s encounters with Arsenal, he had a healthy respect for and fear of archers. Enemies that could strike with the efficiency of a sniper in complete silence. 

A hiss of air rushed past Wally’s ears, and he ducked to the side in panic, a panic that shot up in magnitude as he realized he hadn’t been the target. The arrow was embedded in Heat Wave’s back—more specifically, in the fuel tank. Upon impact, Heat Wave instinctively jerked to the side to check the damage, not realizing he was leaking fuel and fire, and Wally tackled Top out of the way as a spurt of fire passed by overhead. 

He panicked and shouted, feeling the heat rush over them regardless, but when he opened his eyes, he found himself whole and unburnt, and he realized there was an odd hum reverberating through the air, so loud he could feel it in his bones. The flames had spread out but lost most of their high temperature, the boundaries of the flame disrupted by the heavy acoustic field. 

“Piper, I could kiss you,” Wally breathed out, nearly collapsing in relief. Instead, he pulled himself upright to look at Piper, who was sitting there, with the flute in his lips and shaking his head frantically.

With Piper keeping the flames at bay, Wally and Top were safe. But with the flames lowered, and Piper on a different sound frequency, there was nothing left to stop the telepath. 

Three more arrows flew through the air, but they weren’t aimed at Wally or any of the other Rogues. Instead, they struck the ground around the telepath and began hissing as white foam was released from the tip, extinguishing the rest of the fire in her area. Wally and Top ran forward, out of the fire that Piper had dispersed and toward the telepath, but it was too late. 

She rose up in the air, and Wally found his own feet lifted up off the floor. He glanced between himself, Top, Heat Wave, Cold, and Piper. Heat Wave’s own fuel tanks were now empty, and the latter two were disarmed, their weapons of choice floating in the air in front of their faces, just beyond reach. Dead silence now filled the air as Wally’s feet pedaled instinctively over open air. 

“Telepathy, camouflage,  _and_  telekinesis? You won the superpower lottery,” Wally said. He slowly tried to reach down to his belt for the grappling gun, only to let out a grunt of discomfort as his arm was forcibly twisted behind his back, a little rougher than necessary. “That’s unfair.”

“It’s not,” Top corrected.

“What do you...?” Wally meant to ask what the Top had meant by that, but before he could finish the statement, he was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of vertigo. His eyes had trouble focusing, and he felt nauseous enough to puke. Was the girl spinning them around for kicks or was it all in his head?

Wally closed his eyes, and the feeling began to pass, but the moment he opened them, he was again overwhelmed with confusion. 

He wasn’t sure when the telepath let him go, but one moment he was trapped helplessly in the air, and the next, his hands and feet were stinging where they had apparently hit the ground.

He heard the Top shouting. Something about freezing. All of a sudden, he was rushed by a sense of discomfort. Not outright agony, but he felt as if he’d been flipped upside down and inside out. He was freezing cold, and the pressure hurt, and he was well aware that everything was wrong and he was in pain, yet the pain refused to actually register, and Wally was left with a feeling of utter and complete wrongness about everything. 

And as suddenly as the feeling had come, it disappeared, and Wally found himself splayed out on the ground, sharing the floor with four grown men. 

“Have a nice trip?” Mirror Master asked from the doorway. 

Wally sat up, floorboards beneath him, and looked around. The other four Rogues were all sitting here with him, apparently recovering from the confusion just as Wally was, but the moment they had their thoughts together, Cold grabbed Top by the front of his costume. 

“Let me remind you, Top:  _I_  give the orders,” Cold gritted his teeth. 

“Actually, I gave them today, and if it weren’t for me, you guys would be _screwed_ ,” Top said smugly, looking entirely unconcerned by the anger. Just as Wally was beginning to worry they were going to have a stand-off on their hands, Cold released him with a look of either exasperation or disgust. Maybe it was the pun.

“What happened?” Wally said dizzily, leaning against Piper as the older redhead helped him up. 

“I may be wrong, but I think Top decided now was the time for us to try out any new tricks we had left up our sleeve,” Piper said, sounding completely worn out. “Nice, with the grappling hook, by the way.”

“Thanks,” he muttered. Ordinarily, he would’ve basked in praise, but it’d been a long night. “And you, with the, uh... acoustic field. Never would’ve occurred to me to use soundwaves to suppress open flames.” 

“DARPA thought of it first,” Piper said, and then he grabbed Wally by both arms, pressing an ear against his chest. “What the...?” After a beat, he pushed him, spinning Wally around, and pressed an ear against Wally’s back instead. He listened, way too closely for Wally’s comfort, making a wavy trail down Wally’s back and back up. He fiddled with his earpiece and repeated the action. “What’re you doing?”

Piper’s actions had caught the attention of the other Rogues as well. “Listening for feedback,” Piper said, picking at several spots on Wally’s clothes. Finally, he scratched off what looked like a speck of mud on the back of Wally’s shirt. With both hands, Piper snapped it in half. “The original source of our problem: a tracker,” he said. “Do you think we should clear this place out? Maybe they missed it?”

“I’ve bounced your reflections all over town. They probably won’t notice a big difference,” Mirror Master said. “Besides, it’s been two hours. I doubt they spent the entire time glued to the monitor.”

“ _Two hours_?” Wally echoed in disbelief. “It must’ve been, like, two seconds!”

“Well,” Mirror Master shrugged, “hour and a half? You know, you should count yourselves lucky I even managed to get you guys out of the reflections.”

“ _What_?” he said. 

“Putting other people in mirrors, didn’t think I could actually do that, let alone let them out,” Mirror Master said, just as Captain Boomerang walked past. 

With his bandolier of boomerangs slung over a shoulder and looking as if he was done for the night, Digger ducked his head into the room briefly and did a short headcount. “Hey, looks like Sam managed to get you guys out after all,” he said idly, passing Mirror Master a folded wad of cash. 

Cold gave Top an angry glare, but Top only shrugged. “Every plan comes with its own risks. It’s not as if I gave myself special treatment. I got dragged along to the other side, same as you guys,” he said, before turning his attention to Wally. “Speaking of special treatment,  _why_  did you have a group of covert vigilante operatives chasing after you, again?”

“It’s almost four in the damn morning,” Cold said. “We’ll deal with this later.”

“We’ll deal with this now,” Top said. “The Kid was tracked with a bug. Sam spent hours figuring out whether he could get us back out of the reflections. Digger was running all over town to distract the Flash, a job that normally goes to Mick, but he had to come to help us deal with the Martian because fire is the only thing that’ll take her down. And now Mick’s flamethrowers are going to need repairs. We want answers, Cold.”

“Hey, over here,” Wally said, directing their attention away from Captain Cold and back toward himself. “Look, I don’t want to preach about owning up to one’s actions while I’m surrounded by a bunch of crooks, but seriously, if we’re about to have a hissy fit, I’m right here with the answers, all right?”

“Why were they after you?” Piper asked him. 

“It all started with the V9 thing,” Wally said.

“I thought we told you not to get involved with that,” Cold said. 

“I didn’t!” Wally said defensively. Piper shifted slightly at that, and Wally just waited in dread for him to spill the beans, but after the other redhead decided against refuting Wally’s statement, he continued. “Some people thought, that since I appeared around the same time this drug did, I had something to do with it, so the Flash and Zoom went after me. They wanted to catch me and find out what I knew, but you know, I wasn’t going to just go with them. When they almost caught me, I got away when I broke Zoom’s leg.”

Digger let out a loud whoop and clapped from the doorway. “Well damn, Kid, didn’t know you had it in you,” he laughed. 

“No! No, I don’t have that in me,” Wally protested. “It was an accident!” 

“Aw, you ruined it, Kid,” Top said.

“No, I’m serious. Only an idiot would’ve done that on purpose, all right? I broke his leg, fine. Yay, we have Zoom off our backs for a few weeks. Now, I have all of his friends out for my head for an indeterminate amount of time.”

“Well then, we can deal with them the same way,” Digger suggested.

“D—do... do you...!” Wally stammered out. He took a moment to get his thoughts together. “Do you even realize how dumb that is?”

“No, Kid’s got a point,” Cold said as Digger began to look a little more peeved than usual. 

“The more trouble we stir, the more attention we get. Flash and Zoom are too well-connected, and so are their friends. If you get mixed up with one of them, you only get tangled up in more,” Piper said. 

“It doesn’t solve the core problem, though,” Top said. “The very first problem, and the reason they wanted you in the first place. They still think you have a connection to V9.”

“I was a weak suspect. The Junior Justice League might keep chasing me, but once they have new information, they’ll go after the better lead, and I’ll be on my merry way,” Wally told them.

“You mean if,” Piper said. “Whoever’s been selling the drug, they’ve been careful. There’s no guarantee that they’ll ever fully surface. The League might never hear more about them.”

Wally mused over the possibility. Piper was right. O’Hannegan had been taken out of the game almost immediately after Wally ran into him. Whoever was behind this, they were snatching suspected leaks up quick. Of course, if Wally leaked information, it wouldn’t have to go through an entire organization’s worth of word of mouth in order to make it to the League’s ears, not when he was a single degree of separation from Flash and Zoom themselves.

“No, I’ll make sure they hear something,” Wally said. “And since nobody else is making any noise about V9, I can make sure the Justice League hears exactly what I want them to hear.”


	4. Chapter 4

The day passed by at a sluggish pace. Even though Hunter had recovered well enough to go back to school and resume his work as usual, the large gaps in his time where he used to fight thugs and stop robberies were now replaced by more research and data crunching, which always left Hunter feeling listless and bored. He could only reread his files so many times. 

It was the paradox of boredom. The more slowly time seemed to pass by, the more slowly it  _did_  pass by, and by the time he finished re-cataloging his personal profiling folders and ordered them by their activity level, he had three stacks of folders—cold cases, old cases, and new cases with the Rogues on top—and an intense feeling of dissatisfaction growing in the pit of his stomach. 

Hunter got up off the ground and limped back to the wheelchair, sitting idly for a moment before getting back up and letting himself fall onto his bed, trying to ignore the bookshelf of folders behind him. He went back and forth between looking over his shoulder at the bookshelf and burying his face in the pillow, and finally he rolled over, sitting up and reaching for the coffee that sat beside him on his desk. 

It was decaf, of course. He’d never be able to survive with his mind intact if he had to put up with a combination of boredom and hyperactivity. The coffee was thick and cold and a terrible indicator for how much time had passed since he got home. It was always too cool when his powers were running and always heated up by the time it reached his stomach, which made for an interesting sensation. 

In real-time, it had only been twenty minutes since he’d gotten home. He was tempted to turn to television for entertainment, but decided against it. With his mind focused on processing the sounds from television, he’d end up yanked back into real time. In this stream of time, the sound of traffic was slowed down to an ever present, low hum with the occasional rise and fall in pitch. The near-stillness used to make him uncomfortable; now Hunter found it relaxing. He learned to prefer the quiet. 

The quiet was suddenly interrupted by a new low, heavy hum, louder than the rest of the white noise. Hunter sat up at the disturbance, time speeding up to its natural default.

Recognizing the sound of knuckles knocking against his front door, Hunter quickly picked his crutches over the wheelchair and hobbled over to answer it, only slightly mindful of the leg that was still in its cast. 

He opened the door, already knowing who was on the other side. “Wally,” he said, by way of greeting. If it had been anyone else, he probably would’ve ignored the knocking entirely. Of course, the only visitors he really ever got were Jay and Barry, both of whom had keys to his apartment, so it really wasn’t saying  _much_. 

“Figured you were just going to order fast food again, thought I’d save you the trouble,” Wally offered, holding up a bag of takeout to show Hunter. He squirmed guiltily at the sight of junk food, but to be fair, cooking had become a pain in the ass ever since his leg was put in a cast. It made standing for long durations uncomfortable. 

“You shouldn’t have,” he said flatly. Wally knew he didn’t want junk food. Didn’t _want_  to want junk food. 

Hunter’s face only made Wally grin and hold the bag up higher up for Hunter to see. “You know you love it...” he said, giving the food a jaunty little wave.

“You’re a terrible influence,” he said, trying not to sound too pleased. 

“You’re in an oddly good mood,” Wally commented, following after Hunter as he turned around to walk inside.

“Are you being sarcastic?” Hunter asked him.

Wally gave space for a thoughtful pause. “...No,” he finally decided. “No, I’m not.”

“...Okay.”

He  _was_  in an oddly good mood. He’d gotten the call from his team last night and everything. They’d failed to catch the Kid, and since then, his restlessness had increased tenfold. At the same time, he couldn’t understand why he felt so... _good_. 

Maybe Barry was right to insist a break from all Zoom-related work. Not that Hunter had listened, since there was always information from his internship that he could apply to his extracurriculars, but in the past few days he’d had less data to process and no patrols to take, and he couldn’t remember feeling so relaxed. 

Then again, he was still on painkillers.

“I’ve been watching cartoons,” he said. “Nice and mind-numbing, though if I watch too much, I think my brain just starts to shut off out of boredom.”

Wally laughed. “A friend of mine got me watching the Flaming C. It’s pretty okay. I have a hard time figuring out what it’s about.”

“I don’t think anyone knows,” Hunter said. “Wasn’t into the reboot, but if we’re talking classics, I like Whip Whirlwind the best. He was based on a  _real_  hero.”

After setting the bag down on the table, Wally perked up at the sound of a thin metallic ping. “What was that? Did you hear that?” he wondered out loud, glancing around the room for the source of the noise. 

“Email alert,” Hunter lied, hobbling over to his laptop, which sat over on the couch. He thought he’d turned it off before he’d gone to school, but it must’ve stayed on after he’d closed the lid.

“A lot of emails,” Wally commented as he heard another ping, alerting Hunter to another accident or crime he could’ve stopped as Zoom. Barry could get the alerts, though, and Hunter forced himself not to think of it as he turned his laptop off and closed it again. 

“A lot of spam,” he replied, keeping his voice sounding casual and idle. “Mostly school stuff.”

“Which reminds me...” Wally said hesitantly, lowering his backpack to the chair beside the dinner table. “I did have an ulterior motive for coming here.”

Hunter’s senses piqued at the comment, but he forced himself to avoid jumping to conclusions. He doubted Wally’s ulterior motives were much in comparison to the type of ulterior motives Hunter was accustomed to. Not to mention, Wally had been here nearly every day since Hunter’s accident without making any suspicious remarks before now, which earned him at least a few seconds to explain himself.

“What is it?” he asked Wally as the redhead unzipped his backpack. He pulled out one of the notebooks inside and showed it to Hunter.

“Well... it was my own fault in the first place, but I did miss your classes. Can you help me catch up?” Wally asked him. 

Reminded of the short-lived feud between them, Hunter struggled to maintain a cool composure, standing there frozen in place for a full four seconds before nodding. 

“Shouldn’t be hard to get you caught up,” he said in an even tone. “The material isn’t difficult. It’s almost all intuitive.”

“You sure you don’t mind?” Wally asked hesitantly, and Hunter had to snort, honestly finding it a little hard to associate Wally with any sort of dishonest behavior, despite witnessing some himself. Skipping class,  _maybe_. But the events that had led up to it?

“No,” he said. “You want to go over it now?”

“Uh, whenever, though sooner is better,” Wally answered. 

“Right. Exam’s coming up,” Hunter recalled. He watched Wally continue digging around through his backpack, his movements growing a little quicker and jerkier as he searched. 

“Actually, I don’t think I have my textbook on me,” Wally said, sounding worried. 

“Not a problem. I still have the one I used back in my freshman year. I’ll go grab it,” Hunter said, heading straight for his room. The notes he wrote in them were probably better anyway. 

“...Forget your crutches?” Wally asked him, eying the crutches that had been left leaning against the table. Hunter stopped for a moment, turning back to look, and then turned back around, continuing forth to hide his sheepishness. 

“Don’t nag,” he muttered. 

Back in his room, Hunter made his way around the stacked folders and went through his bookshelf. In it was a section of textbooks, used books he’d gotten in his first semesters at the university, and wedged inside among them was his old psychology text. Hunter tugged at the book but winced and swore loudly as several books fell out along with it. To add to the mess, it knocked over and scattered the folders that had already been stacked neatly on the ground.

Wally was there almost immediately, ducking his head in after Hunter to investigate the noise. “What was that?” he asked, looking much too concerned for Hunter’s liking. He didn’t like how quickly Wally had apparently run over, carrying the damn crutches along with him.

“Nothing,” Hunter said, awkwardly kneeling with one leg sticking out to pick up the fallen books and folders. 

“Police reports?” Wally wondered, ignoring Hunter’s dismissal in favor of helping organize the folders back into a stack. He paused on the Rogues, no doubt recognizing some of the names from the news. 

“Work stuff,” Hunter corrected, pulling the folders away from Wally by pushing them back into one stack. He shoved it to the side, and when the folders toppled again, he ignored them. “I was going to change it back to alphabetical order anyway,” he said, grabbing the textbook he had come for in the first place and pushing it into Wally’s hands, trading it for the crutches. “Walk.”

Before Wally could protest, Hunter gave him a little shove, forcing the redhead towards the door. Wally gave him an odd look before going along with it, though he sent the wheelchair in the room a cursory glance. 

“You know, my mom needs to stay with Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris because our apartment isn’t wheelchair friendly, but I don’t need to be there. If you need your room back, I could always take my stuff and leave,” he said tentatively. 

“I’m not going to kick you out,” Hunter said. “There’s enough room for the both of us at Barry’s, but probably not enough for two wheelchairs. I’m fine here.”

He followed closely behind Wally, a silent urge for him to move. He hadn’t felt comfortable, with Wally so close to the profiles he had built on all his criminal encounters. The files on the local crime life were easy enough to pass off as research for the CCPD, but it would’ve been harder to explain the files he had on the more obscure criminals from all over world. Not impossible, but he preferred to avoid the trouble until he had a more solid excuse to tell.

“Just saying,” Wally shrugged, setting the textbook down on the table. Hunter made an attempt to clear the table for the two of them but mostly only succeeded in rearranging the mess instead. Wally managed to find space to set up their separate food cartons. “This is different,” he said as he flipped through the pages.

“Older edition,” Hunter said as he sat down beside Wally. “Same information, but I have the important parts outlined. Everything you’d need study.” He leaned in toward the table, reaching for one of the takeout cartons, only for Wally to absentmindedly grab it first, still focused on the book.

“I kind of feel like this is cheating,” Wally said, completely oblivious to Hunter’s glaring. 

“...First semester psychology is mostly intuitive,” Hunter finally said, dismissing his own irritation and reaching for the other carton. “Honestly, a single read-through should be enough.”

“And if it’s not?” Wally asked. 

“Then we’re reading it again,” he said, breaking the chopsticks. When Wally groaned, Hunter rolled his eyes. “You asked for help. It’s your fault for skipping class.” 

“I know,” Wally mumbled. As Hunter started eating his takeout, Wally looked back down at the notes. “...Your handwriting sucks.”

“It’s not that bad,” Hunter protested, reaching out to take the textbook and see for himself. He had to admit, the scrawled writing was a  _bit_  difficult to read, and the graphite pencil markings hadn’t been neatly preserved since he’d put the book away. “...I’ll just read it to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Click Me.](http://justm3h.tumblr.com/post/45968633310/more-fedora-fic-stuff-i-draw-too-much-shit-for) This might as well be canon.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for skipping a week! This one's gonna be a short chapter.

“I’m going to hell,” Wally reminded himself in a low voice as he poked Hunter’s unmoving body. His head lolled against his forearm. Hunter’s voice had trailed off minutes ago as he read from the textbook, but Wally had to make sure. “Hunter?” he said in a slightly louder voice, shaking him gently by the shoulder. Hunter didn’t wake up. He barely stirred.

Wally grabbed their leftovers first, taking them over to the sink. The last thing he needed was for Hunter to test his food for drugs if he became suspicious of why he dozed off so easily. Wally threw the noodles into the waste disposal and turned it on, wincing at the loud noise and warily watching Hunter for any movement the entire time it ran. 

He washed the cartons clean, scrubbing them bare, and tossed them in the trash before walking back to check on Hunter.

“Hey, you shouldn’t sleep on the table like this,” he said, shaking Hunter’s shoulder a bit more insistently now, and when he didn’t wake up, Wally moved on. 

It was a longshot, and the odds of Wally actually recovering the V9 Hunter had confiscated were low. Probably too low to be risking drugging Hunter’s food, but he had to try. 

Except he had no idea where to start. 

Wally half-heartedly lifted the cushions, slowly feeling overwhelmed with the idea of going through Hunter’s things. 

Why would Hunter even hide V9 there? What if Wally ended up searching for too long, and Hunter woke up? What if he had simply given V9 to his team?

No. Wally had to assume from the lack of fallout that Hunter hadn’t told Barry or the rest of his superhero friends. If he hadn’t turned it in, it had to be somewhere he commonly went. Probably, anyway. His apartment, Barry’s home, the police station where he interned, or somewhere at school. 

It had to be his apartment. He’d been so furious to find that Wally had left it at Barry’s home, and Wally doubted Hunter had the gall to hide the drugs at the police station, and he couldn’t imagine Hunter hiding it at school. Of course, if Hunter also had, perhaps, a locker with his teammates... 

It was  _possible_ , but Hunter didn’t seem the type to store it away like that. Somewhere he couldn’t easily access. 

It had to be at the apartment. Or in the trash.

Wally zeroed in on the trash in the kitchen before turning back. No, Hunter was obsessive about his trash. He kept a larger bin for recycling papers and plastics. Would a transdermal patch even be thrown in there? A rudimentary glance proved that it was almost all just plastic jugs and bottles and wrappers in there now. Everything else went into the smaller trash can, which he got rid of almost daily. If he had thrown it away in there, Wally wasn’t going to be getting it back.

The bathroom trash can. 

Wally marched into the bathroom. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was relieved that it was empty. One less place to check, and not exactly a place he wanted to stick his hands. He should’ve brought some latex gloves. Wally had considered it earlier, but balked at the thought that Hunter might spot them and find them suspicious. 

Wally opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. It was well-stocked. A first aid kit, over-the-counter antibiotics and painkillers, creams and balms for treating everything from balms to muscle soreness and acne. The first aid kit didn’t contain anything other than bandages, gauze, a smaller suture kit, and an assortment of other medical knickknacks.

No V9. 

For the sake of being thorough, though, he checked the painkillers. Mostly low-grade things that were easy to get ahold of. They were generally unopened, only there for emergencies, but the medication given to him for his leg, Wally knew he still used regularly. Wally checked the brand, just to make extra sure it was the same type he had crushed and slipped into Hunter’s food. 

Same brand, same color, same shape. Of course, if he’d been wrong, there wouldn’t have been much he could do if Hunter became suspicious of how quickly he’d fallen asleep and chose to test himself, but Wally liked to know what to watch out for. 

In any case, there was no V9 to be found in the bathroom. 

So it wasn’t in the bathroom, and it was doubtful he’d leave it in the living room and kitchen, the most accessible rooms in the house. They were the first places walked into when entering his apartment, and even if Hunter didn’t regularly entertain visitors, it was psychologically too open. If Hunter was hiding things in his apartment, it wouldn’t be by the front door. 

 _Look at me being a profiler doing profiling things..._  Wally thought to himself, though his mood took a grimmer turn as he realized where he’d go to search next.

With a silent apology for his further intrusion, Wally walked into Hunter’s bedroom. The first thing he rooted through was the trashcan under the desk. It was less frequently emptied and, thankfully, filled with paper and not much else. He dumped the contents out, flipping through pages to see if maybe slips of the drug had been left in between papers. They should’ve fallen to the bottom, but he found nothing. 

Biting back frustration and reminding himself that this was a longshot, Wally shoved the trash back in the bin, sitting on the floor. 

Think, just think, he chanted silently in his head. 

Under. 

Wally recalled the hollowed out spot in the floor at Uncle Barry’s house. Hunter liked to hide things under. Wally scrambled up and down the floorboards of the room, trying to feel for any cracks or hollowness. He pushed down the feeling of frustration that was continuously welling up in his chest. 

No, Hunter wouldn’t have made anything like that. He lived at Barry’s place, Barry owned that house. He wouldn’t do anything that permanent to his apartment, he was only renting it. Something less permanent and easily accessible.

After rooting through the Hunter’s dresser contents, pulling out the drawers and finding nothing but Zoom’s personal costume and equipment, Wally was on the verge of simply leaving the room, but he paused outside the doorway, recalling the way Hunter had firmly ushered him out. 

Wally turned around one last time. 

The bookshelf. It was filled with textbooks and folders, any which one of them could contain a patch of V9.

Luckily, he had superspeed. 

Wally went through the shelf, starting with the textbooks, page by page, hastily flipping through them as carefully as he could while using his speed. Tearing pages would be a dead giveaway that someone had been through his things. 

Book after book, eventually, his wrist began to ache fiercely, and Wally still hadn’t found anything. Once he worked his way through all of the textbooks, Wally stared dejectedly at the remaining stacks of folders that were lying on the ground. 

He had already been at this for too long, and he honestly had no idea how long it would be until Hunter woke up. The drowsiness from the pain killers could only last from a few minutes to a few hours. Aside from the fact that he didn’t know jack about dosages, he couldn’t just go up to Hunter and ask him how his powers affected his metabolism either. For all Wally knew, now that he’d fallen asleep, he might even stay way for the rest of the night. 

In any case, Wally didn’t know when Hunter would be waking up, and he had to work quickly and figure out where it could be. If he was keeping V9 somewhere around here, it would probably have to be somewhere significant to the situation. Something significant. If Hunter was going to be keeping V9 hidden somewhere...

O’Hannegan? Wally checked that folder. It was practically empty. Nothing. 

He looked at Hunter’s earliest cases. Nothing. 

His latest cases. Nothing.

The most famous Zoom-related cases. Nothing.

He had a file on himself as Zoom. Nothing. 

He checked the Flash file. Nothing. 

Rogues maybe?

Wally checked Hunter’s file on the Pied Piper first. After all, Piper was the one who had introduced Wally to V9 and helped him investigate. He opened the file and skimmed its contents out of curiosity. Hartley Rathaway. The name sounded foreign in Wally’s head. He was too used to calling him Piper in his head. Born deaf. 

...Huh. 

He did not see that one coming. 

A little odd, considering the fact that the Piper’s entire gimmick revolved around sound, but his parents apparently had a hand in that, paying for some top of the line cochlear implants that gave the young genius a fixation on sound. As Wally continued reading the profile, he had to stop to wrap his mind around a line halfway through the file.

“ _Heir to multi-million dollar fortune_?”

Well, apparently he’d also been admitted to a mental hospital at one point, which certainly explained why Piper had chosen a life of crime over a life of luxury. Wally rolled his eyes, clapping the folder shut. He wasn’t going to find any drugs there anyway. 

And then the sight of a certain folder made him pause. 

The Kid.

Wally opened it. Unlike the other notes, these were messily scrawled. New. Hunter hadn’t had time to go over them and sort all his thoughts out. A lot of the notes were on scraps of papers, things jotted down on the back of receipts, scratch sheets, index cards, and sticky notes. 

‘Strikes at suspiciously inconvenient times for Flash and Zoom to arrive.’ Oh. He’d caught on. There was even a note, scrawled next to it in frustrated, jagged handwriting, indicating that now that the Kid had nearly been caught  _twice_ , he would be likely to change his pattern again.

Egotistical. Possible narcissism? Massive superiority/inferiority complex? Feels remorse/guilt for actions. Distances self from crime. Not likely to return to same scene twice. Profile doesn’t match that of most other Rogues. Likely deliberately chosen to join for this reason.

“ _Easily manipulated_?” Wally repeated out loud, making a face. Sure, there was a question mark by the comment, but it didn’t make it feel much less offensive. Wally scowled, picking through little slips of papers and notes, rifling through them until his fingers met a thicker material, like an index card but rougher. 

Bingo. 

He was almost insulted by the fact that Hunter had hidden the V9 in the Kid’s folder, but it hadn’t surprised him either, not when the Kid exhibited superspeed and they were investigating a drug that delivered similar effects to it. 

Wally took one of the samples. He couldn’t keep one, not with the possibility that Hunter kept count of these. Instead, he took it to the kitchen, keeping an eye on Hunter the entire time, and he took a pair of scissors from one of the drawers. Wally carefully cut a straight centimeter off the edge of the patch. The patches had already been cut unevenly by O’Hannegan’s hands, and even if Hunter was meticulous enough to keep count of the patches themselves, he doubted Hunter kept track of the measurements.

He pulled a stick of flavorless, clear lip balm out of his pocket and carefully ran it along the edges that he had cut from the patches. The last thing he needed was for the sample to run dry because he’d left the open cuts on the patches exposed. He put his own small strip of the patch in a plastic sandwich bag and took the original piece back to Hunter’s room, slipping it back into the folder where he’d found it and laying said folder back down in the stack on the floor. 

Rolling up the sandwich bag, Wally walked back over to the table where Hunter was still sleeping face-down on and put it in his backpack. 

“You jerk,” Wally muttered, frowning down at Hunter, but he couldn’t really feel much venom behind it. Even though Hunter’s assessment of the Kid was wrong, wrong,  _wrong_ , it didn’t make Wally feel much better when he had manipulated his way into Hunter’s home so he could search through his friend’s things. Wally moved to the couch and sat there idly for a few minutes before sitting back down at the table, where he glanced at the textbook and the new notes he’d taken with Hunter. 

Finally he made an uncomfortable sound, realizing there was a good chance he’d be here all night. With a sigh, Wally grabbed Hunter by the arm and tried to lift him, only to realize this wasn’t going to work. 

After taking a moment to think, Wally went back to Hunter’s room, grabbed his unused wheelchair and wheeled it back out through the short hallway, next to Hunter’s bedside.

This was a  _much_  more practical distance to carry Hunter. 

With a slight huff, Wally awkwardly lifted Hunter back up, ignoring the sleepy groan next to his ear, and deposited him into the wheelchair. After that, it was just a matter of wheeling him back to his room, dumping him in his bed, and leaving his crutches leaning against the wall nearby. 

After a moment’s thought, Wally grabbed a pen off Hunter’s desk and jotted down on top of the first clean sheet of paper he found:  _You were out like a light. Nearly dropped you and you didn’t even wake up. I don’t want to leave your door unlocked when I leave, so I’m taking your spare key, I’ll give it back tomorrow. Note to selves: drugs + MSG = BAD IDEA._

Wally left, but only went a step before adding a little more to the note.

_And brush your teeth, Stinky._


	6. Chapter 6

The office hours were from noon to two, usually by appointment, and David usually didn’t get many students dropping by with question, so when, two hours after he figuratively shut his doors, his work was interrupted by someone’s insistent knocking, he perked up at the noise. He cracked open the door and looked outside to see a familiar redhead, though not the one he’d been expecting. 

The moment David saw Wally standing outside his lab, holding up a plastic bag with a white strip inside of it, he knew it couldn’t be any good.

“David! Hey, David,” he greeted. “Want to try something awesome?”

“No,” David deadpanned. “No, I do not.”

He nearly closed the door on Wally right then and there, but the little troublemaker had somehow managed to snake his foot in past the doorway before David could get it closed, keeping it wedged open. 

“Come on!” Wally whined from the other side of the door. 

“Not now,” David gritted. He was  _supposed_  to be going out for lunch.

“You said I should ask people before trying anything drastic,” he said insistently. “This is me asking you before I do something drastic.”

“Are you  _threatening_  me?” David asked, trying to force Wally’s foot out of the threshold and ignoring Wally’s insistent denial. “We’re also taught to say no to drugs. This is me saying no to drugs,” he hissed.

“How’d you know this is a drug?” Wally asked loudly, and David gritted his teeth, flinging the door wide open. Surprised by the sudden movement, Wally nearly fell, only for David to grab, steady, and drag him inside, closing the door behind him. 

“Not so loud,” he said irritably. “Someone walking outside might hear you or something.”

“How’d you know what this was?” Wally said, in only a marginally quieter volume. 

“I didn’t. Now I do.” And if he’d known that Wally would’ve come to him with something as big as this, he probably would’ve never figuratively left his door open to Wally and his requests.

“You  _guessed_?”

“The first time you drew my attention, it was because you were working on your experiment in my class. The second time, you told me you were studying a drug that boosts the metabolism, which means it was either a diet pill or a cheap attempt to copy what our city is most well known for: its speed. Since you had problems with its legality, it was probably the latter. Past attempts at this weren’t very successful; the only way for a drug to boost someone’s metabolism so drastically without getting flushed through someone’s system almost immediately is if the use was prolonged, which means constant contact, which means either you can hook yourself up to an IV—which would get in your way and ruin the point of superspeed—or you could use a drug transferred through medicated adhesive patches. Seeing you a third time, walking in with a snippet of a patch stored inside an airtight plastic bag, I made an educated guess.”

“...You  _guessed_!” Wally exclaimed, looking conflicted. “In, like, two seconds? I’m not sure if I’m angry or turned on.”

David stared at him. He  _really_  stared, keeping his face carefully blank until Wally began to reflect back on what he said and immediately backtracked. 

“I mean, ‘ _what the hell_?’” Wally amended. 

“That’s better,” David said, giving in slightly. “What do you want? And if you’re going to suggest trying this out, you’re going to need to leave.”

“No, definitely not. You are one of the last people I would probably ever consider asking to do drugs with,” Wally said pacifyingly, and David decided to take that as a compliment to his integrity. “But I do need your lab.”

“I’m not lending you my labspace. You have no idea how much work I had to do to convince the department to let me use it for my personal research. I am  _this close_  to graduating,” David said, holding his finger and thumb close together, “and I’m not risking all that so you can play with your drugs.”

“This will  _help_  people,” Wally said. “It’s not a problem now, but it will be, I  _know_ it.”

“You don’t,” he said. 

“I  _do_. It’s starting. Crime’s on the rise. There’s a new evil speedster running around that everyone knows about but, well, no one knows  _anything_  about. He shows up, and, all of a sudden, Zoom’s  _missing_  and this drug breaks out on the street like a rash only to disappear. This isn’t the final product. This drug was nothing but a testing phase.” 

“You know what? That is reason to be concerned,” David said honestly, with all the patience he could manage. “But something like this would be better off in the hands of profess—”

“I’ll do everything. You can have all the credit!” Wally said.

“I’m not going to make you do all the work in  _my_  lab,” David said incredulously. “I don’t—I don’t even know what you’re trying to do with the drug.”

“Well, I was thinking if we’d use the sample to reproduce more of the same drug and run tests on its effectiveness in the presence of different inhibitors,” he suggested. 

“...What kind of inhibitors?” David asked, He didn’t really want in on this, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he was intrigued by Wally’s thought processes. 

“I... well... I don’t...” Wally stammered, and David’s interest began to plummet with the lack of any sort of solid idea. “I already have several ideas on how to design the inhibitors—”

“Wait, wait, you want to try creating inhibitor drugs? Or do you have an actual tested drug? Because creating several new drugs is a lot of work by itself. That’s your goal, right? So the important thing is that we create an inhibitor that can counteract this speed drug,” David asked, perhaps a little redundantly to make sure he understood it right. 

“Well, yeah, I know designing the drugs is a lot of work, but I’ve already thought of some of the basic designs we could use based on what I learned from the structure of the drug. I’m thinking that we can create an allosteric inhibitor with one of my designs so that you take the inhibitor, which will change the shape of the substrate, and if that changes, the drug can’t attach itself—”

“Yeah, I know what an allosteric inhibitor is,” he said a little impatiently. “But that’s way too complicated.”

“No, it’s not,” Wally insisted. “But if we run into problems, I have a lot of different ideas about the conformity of the inhibitor. We could—”

“Save ourselves a lot of trouble by creating a replica of this drug,” David said, “and then altering the copy itself. We cripple the drug so that it has almost the exact same shape as the original but an entirely useless function. And then we’ll have made a competitive inhibitor instead.” He motioned toward his lab. “And then we save  _me_  the cost of dozens of chemicals that we’d have to have ordered and shipped to my lab.”

Wally stared, his mouth slowly opening and closing. “What?”

“You brainstormed and created allosteric inhibitors and possible analogs in case they didn’t work, but you don’t understand—?

“No, no, I get it, I just...” he shook his head, still looking downright dumbfounded, and then it clicked. 

“Didn’t occur to you, huh?” David realized, nodding understandingly. “...Somehow, I’m not surprised. You need to remember that there are simpler ways of doing things. Instead of doing cartwheels around the room, you could just walk and take two steps to the right.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t...” Wally couldn’t even finish the sentence, smacking himself in the forehead and then shaking his head, looking a little disappointed. “But it would work...? Would it be as effective?”

“No, probably not, but we’ll save me a few hundred dollars and probably weeks or even months of testing,” he told Wally. “And if we play it right, we’ll have turned our meth into, like, Adderall.”

“This isn’t exactly either of those,” Wally said, holding up the drug but David shook his head. 

“Simplicity’s sake, Wally. Don’t overthink it,” David said, and all of a sudden, a thought hit him and he wanted to hit himself. 

He was in.

* * *

“Am I  _boring_  you?”

Wally jerked at the sharp change in Hunter’s tone and nearly backhanded his burger as he sat up, back straight and arms rigid. 

“What? No!” he said, perhaps a little too hastily, but it couldn’t be helped when Hunter was glaring daggers at him. “Fine, okay. You have a very nice voice. Very soothing, kinda flat. ...It’s killing me.”

Hunter gave up on reading his notes out loud for the day. He had picked up where they had left off the other day when he had apparently fallen asleep, and the two of them hadn’t gotten very far, but to be fair, Wally was picking the subject up easily enough. It would only take a day or two more for Wally to fully catch up to the rest of the class if they took their time. 

“Speaking of killing, I feel like my leg is just stabbing at me,” Hunter said, heading to the bathroom where he’d left his medication. Wally swallowed, his throat feeling dry.

“You know, if you’d just stop forgetting your crutches everywhere...” Wally called, grabbing the crutches that had been leaning against the table and following after Hunter with them.

“You nag,” Hunter said as Wally sped up and moved in front of him. 

“You dimwit,” Wally snapped back, refusing to move until he took the crutches. “You know, it’s harder to forget your wheelchair, since you just sit in it and don’t leave to get up at all.”

Hunter made a face as if it had been a threat rather than a suggestion and huffily took the crutches from Wally’s hands. As Hunter continued toward the bathroom, Wally went back to the table and sat down, waiting for him. 

“You sure you should even take one?” he asked Hunter. His stomach was doing flip flops. “You practically conked out yesterday.”

“It’ll take a bit of time for me to get drowsy anyway,” Hunter said, coming back with a pill bottle. He grabbed the cup on the table and drank the water with his painkillers. “Funny thing, though, I never got that tired before.”

“Yeah, well,” Wally said, doing his best to hide the tenseness of his voice. “So long as I’m out the door before you pass out,” he said. “Oh, I almost forgot to give you back your keys.”

“Ah, hold on to it,” Hunter said. “I hate getting up to open the door now anyway.”

Wally scoffed. “It would be a lot less of a pain if you’d just sit your butt in the—”

“Did you eat all the fries?” Hunter interrupted Wally, clearly avoiding the subject of the wheelchair. Hunter didn’t seem to have anything in particular against wheelchairs, but there was still a distinct hatred for the contraption, and he treated it as if it were his worst enemy. To be fair, it had to be annoying to use it in his apartment, which wasn’t tiny by any means, but the arrangement of furniture made it a pain to maneuver around. Wally had once asked him if he wanted help moving his furniture around to accomodate the wheelchair better, only to receive a glare and a terse, ‘everything is  _perfect_ ’. “This is unforgivable, Wally.”

“Well, I paid for it,” he huffed, picking up his burger again to finish eating. The paper bag was a little damp from the rain that had started to pour halfway to Hunter’s apartment, but the contents had all been kept dry, thanks to a slightly reckless use of his powers to sprint the rest of the way there. The burger had grown slightly cold since then, as Wally had accidentally half-dozed off. But, on the subject of food, Wally remembered what his mother had asked him earlier that morning as he got ready for school. “Oh, my mom asked me to ask you what your Thanksgiving plans were,” he said. 

It felt strange to ask, especially on his mom’s behalf. It was Barry and Iris that Hunter was closer too; it would’ve made more sense for them to ask, especially since they had his number. Of course, his mom  _was_  trying to be more involved with Wally’s life nowadays, something Wally was finally beginning to adjust to. And it wasn’t as if Barry and Iris had been absent from the room while Wally had been asked to carry on the message, so it was probably more of a group thing than his mom specifically inviting Hunter over.

“Is this an invite?” Hunter asked, seeming to find it as strange as Wally did. 

“I know, it's kind of random, but she was really insistent that I at least ask,” Wally said. “Anyway, it's at my aunt and uncle's place. Obviously, I guess.”

“Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it,” he finished thoughtfully. “For Thanksgiving, I used to split my time between some friends and Barry’s. Last year, I was supposed to go to Ashley’s place and have dinner with her family, but things happened.”

“Things between you were that serious, then? How long did you two date?” he asked. He couldn't imagine Hunter and Ashley ever being in a relationship for that long. As far as he was concerned, the closer a relationship was, the harder it was to patch up once it was all done and over with. His own parents were an example of that.

“Three years,” Hunter said. “Sometimes I went to Ashley's for dinner. Her dad would talk our ears off about his work in the Metahuman Criminal Psychology Unit. Ashley hated it. I never wanted to leave.”

“What happened?”

His wince was almost invisible.

“I made a mistake. After that, it didn't feel like we could work things out,” he said, only a little more quietly than usual but, otherwise, forcefully casual as he peeked under the curtains. “Rain's letting up. You should go in case it gets too late. I think it's going to get worse tonight.”

Wally nodded and got up from the couch. He knew when he was being dismissed, just as he knew when he was encroaching on sensitive territory but, as usual, he just couldn't stop himself. He picked his jacket off the rack on the wall, dry but a little stiff, and headed towards the door. “See you tomorrow then.”

“Yeah,” Hunter said waving him off distractedly before frowning at his own manners. “And tell your family I said thanks for the invite.”

“So you're coming?”

“Can't think of anything else I'd rather do..”

Wally nodded and quickly ducked out of the apartment. It wasn't a big deal for him to come over to the Allen's for Thanksgiving, since Barry would have probably invited Hunter himself, but Wally couldn't stop himself from grinning when he said yes anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I might as well just tag this as Wally/Hunter now, shouldn't I?


	7. Chapter 7

“I'm not entirely sure I want to go through with this,” Wally said hesitantly as Piper gave him a gentle push down the sidewalk. 

“Your clothes keep getting all tattered whenever you run, and that last fight, they were like paper. Stop dawdling. You're pretty slow for a speedster.”

“I don't need a tailor, I just need a new pair of shoes...” 

“Gambi’s a cobbler, too. He'll make you new shoes. Ones that'll  _last_ ,” Piper insisted. 

“I don’t want a fancy new outfit or pair of shoes, I want something cheap, off-the-rack, and easy to buy at the snap of a finger,” Wally protested awkwardly. 

“Put on something made by Gambi, and you'll never want anything else ever again,” he tried to assure Wally, who thought about all the parkas and tights and polka dots and really, really doubted it. He was willing to spend pretty obscene amounts of money on new clothes if it meant not wearing brightly colored pixie boots, tights, or slippers.

“People know Gambi works with the Rogues,” Wally said anxiously, adjusting the mask on his face. “What if someone sees me there?”

“As far as the public's concerned, Gambi's keeping to the straight and narrow nowadays,” Piper said.

“No one's noticed he still works on their costumes?”

“There's a reason our basic looks've mostly been the same for the past few years. He does make new designs, but he keeps the changes subtle to avoid attention,” Piper said, knocking on the glass door. It made sense and explained why the Rogues had the same costumes for so long.

Like the shops surrounding it, it didn't seem to be open this late at night, but a portly man walked up to the glass pane and squinted through the door. Recognizing Piper, he unlocked the latches on the door and let them inside. “Piper! Good to see you,” the man greeted. 

“I was a little worried you didn't get my message,” Piper replied. “Sorry for asking you to come in so late. Kid works odd hours.”

“Aah, yes, you must be the infamous Kid. I've heard a bit about you,” Gambi said, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at Wally, who resisted the urge to squirm under observation. The Kid prided himself on rarely being seen, but he wasn't people-shy.

“Nothing good, am I right?” Wally smirked, resisting the urge to fidget and adjust his mask again. He wasn't sure what to make of this man or how to act around him. Paul Gambi was a close associate of the Rogues, but he seemed harmless enough. Of course, round people always seemed pretty harmless, especially when they had good hygiene.

“I think you were described as 'shit-eating', 'cocky', and 'full of it',” Gambi informed him.

“That sounds about right,” Wally grinned, knowing better than to take it offensively. Compared to the things the Rogues said to each others' faces, that was positively mild. He glanced around the shop as Gambi led them to the back. Most of the suits hanging on the racks looked fine, and the entire store seemed perfectly ordinary until they stopped in front of the wall in the back. 

“This,” Gambi said, fiddling with some sort of latch or keypad hidden from Wally's view, “is my private workshop.” And with a small clacking sound, a crack appeared in the wall, creating the outline of a door.

“A secret door in the back of a men's store?” Wally said out loud. “...For some reason, I'm not really surprised.”

Piper elbowed Wally. “You're being rude.”

“It's part of my charm.” 

Piper glared at Wally for his manners, but Gambi only laughed. “Do you know who this Kid reminds me of?” he asked Piper suddenly. “ _James_. No wonder you like him so much.”

“I don’t  _like_  him,” Piper protested immediately. “Don’t—don’t fuel his ego. You have no idea how insufferable he can get.”

“I’ve worked with James,” Gambi said, giving Piper a knowing look. “I think I do.”

“Who's James?” Wally asked, his eyes bright in anticipation of gossip. 

“I told you about him a while ago,” Piper said, his tone slightly hardened. “Used to be the Trickster, but he went straight and skipped town.”

“No, no, he came back,” Gambi told them. “Came around the store a while ago. He was looking for  _you_.”

Wally glanced at Piper, who looked a little unsettled by the news, but finally he shrugged.

“Haven't seen him,” he smiled, sounding a little too casually for Wally. “Guess he hasn't caught up to me yet.”

* * *

Trickster was before Wally's time. He didn’t know much about James Jesse, just that he disappeared from Central some time ago and hadn't been heard from since. There were a few tabloid-based rumors, mostly focused on stirring interest than telling the truth. The only way he'd be able to find out the truth about the Trickster would be to ask someone who knew him. 

The problem was that Piper wasn't elaborating on his connection with the Trickster, and Wally wasn’t sure if he even wants to bring the subject up to the other Rogues. Piper seemed a little shaken just by the mention of him, which made Wally uncertain as to how the rest of the Rogues would react.

That brought him down to one last person who knew the Rogues as well as they knew themselves. Someone who studied their backgrounds, their personalities, and even their motives.

Hunter scowled at the mere mention of them.

“Why do you want to know about  _them_  for?” he asked. He seemed a little irritated by the subject—not that Wally had expected anything else from him. Hunter seemed to have a chip on his shoulder the size of Missouri when it came to people who broke the law. Still, it was a little strange, now that Wally thought about it. He never heard about Zoom's temper until he had actually moved to Central and witnessed it for himself—it seemed to be a recent thing.

“Back in Blue Valley, the worst we ever got were spray-painted fences and litter. We didn't have much in the way of crime before, but then I move here, and I end up running into Captain Boomerang and Mirror Master and all sorts of crazies,” Wally shrugged. “And I figured since you're doing part-time work at the station and all, you might've done some profiling on them. You know, figuring out what makes a guy dress up in a rainbow suit and rob banks. But I guess since you're new and all, you haven't done much work on the Rogues and stuff, huh?”

Hunter scoffed at Wally's suggestion. “I’ve been profiling them before I ever got the internship. Come on,” he said, picking up his crutches and heading over to his bedroom. He hobbled to the far side of the wall and turned to face his bookshelf, skimming through its contents. He picked out folders and notebooks, which seemed to have been kept in some sort of meticulous order, and tossed them each on the bed behind him to save himself the trouble of carrying them on crutches. 

Wally looked down at the last folder that fell on the top of the pile and recognized the name written on the label. Mark Mardon. He picked up the folder and opened it.

“Are these up-to-date?” he asked, flipping open the folder to see several photos and notes—handwritten and typed—featuring the former Weather Wizard. 

“Not the pictures,” Hunter said, leaning his crutches against the bedframe and laying on his side on the mattress with his elbow propping him up. “But I keep my notes current. I wrote them all up myself since I don't have much access or footing in the department just yet. Once I build up a reputation and get an actual job in the CCPD, I could probably work my theories onto the rogues gallery and see what other people think.”

He picked up one of the older pictures. A mugshot from the early days it seemed, seeing as he was arrested for a crime as mundane as breaking and entering. Before his days as Weather Wizard, probably.  _His eyes were blue_ , Wally mused. 

“That's Mark Mardon. Weather Wizard. You probably remember him. He's the one who tore up the East Grey neighborhood with his tornadoes,” Hunter said after taking the picture to see what Wally was looking at. 

“Yeah,” Wally muttered, the memory still a little too clear in his head. The man hadn't been around the bar so often anymore, probably a little bitter after being forced into retirement, but even his absence was still a constant and unpleasant reminder of the entire day. A reminder of what his father had done and how little progress Wally had made on the V9 front.

A mild hypocrite, Hunter must’ve noticed the tension in Wally’s frame and the growing anger in his eyes, and he gently tugged the folder from Wally's hands. “Let me look at that,” he said, taking it to decipher his jumble of notes. 

“Right,” he finally said, skimming its contents. “So a few years ago, Mardon was arrested for a home invasion. He was sentenced and ended up serving some time in prison. His older brother, Clyde, always took responsibility for him, but going to prison and actually suffering the consequences of his own actions seemed to have dealt a bit of a blow to his psyche, not to mention his pride. Later, he breaks out of prison, and the police get a phone call from his brother, saying Mardon was trying to hide out as his lab. But by the time the police arrived, Clyde's place was trashed. Mardon killed his older brother so he wouldn't have to go back to prison, there's no question about that, but unlike what the police think, I doubt it was on purpose.”

“Why not?” Wally asked.

“If he was just learning to wield the weather wand, his control wouldn't have been great, introducing the possibility that it was all just an accident. A loss of control. On the psychological front, Mark Mardon is... childish. Not immature or unintelligent, just irresponsible. He doesn't like taking responsibility for his own actions and acts like his brother's death never happened. If the murder of his brother is brought up, he gets very...  _defensive_ ,” Hunter said in the way that made Wally very sure Hunter had probably brought it up before. Loudly, in front of Mark, and maybe even on multiple occasions. “Anyway, it's been awhile since the Weather Wizard's shown his face. I think he’s laying low because of the East Grey incident, so you probably won't need to worry about him for a while.”

He was right about that, at least, even if his assumptions as to why weren't completely accurate. Weather Wizard wasn't going to be back on the scene while his weapon was broken. Wally looked down at the other folders on the covers of Hunter's bed. As interesting as it was to hear Hunter's take on the Rogues, Wally still had a specific Rogue to look into.

He frowned, unable to find the name he was looking for through the initial glance. “What about the Trickster?” he asked, searching the folders.

“Oh.” Hunter made a face. “... _Him._ ”

Hunter pulled out a folder. Wally read the name on the folder out loud. “Giovanni Giuseppe?” It didn't sound anything like 'James'.

“Yeah. He was born into a family of circus acrobats, but had a serious fear of heights. His solution? He built antigravity boots. For a circus act. He made functioning  _antigravity boots_  for a  _circus act_ ,” he repeated a second time, as if he still couldn't really believe it.

Wally couldn’t help but feel impressed by the Trickster’s accomplishment. He’d seen the former Rogue on television before, running in the sky, but it never occurred to him that it hadn’t been some sort of innate ability or stolen gimmick. He had created those boots himself, and Wally could respect that. “Cool!” he breathed out, only for Hunter to give him an unhappy look. “...Not cool?”

“... _Anyway_ ,” Hunter continued. “He decided to turn his talents to crime, mostly known for theft and robbery when he ran with the Rogues. But above all, the man is a con artist. It's probably how he's got everybody  _fooled_...”

“What do you mean by that?” Wally asked.

“He's supposedly reformed. A few well-placed words, and everyone conveniently forgets that he was a Rogue. A  _con artist_. He's even got a comfy desk at the FBI now,” Hunter said a little bitterly.

“You never know, he might be sincere about it,” Wally said, thinking about Piper’s reluctance to even mention the Trickster. He couldn't imagine the Rogues being too happy about Trickster being in the FBI if he really did go straight.

“He could be. He probably is,” he admitted. “But almost all the Rogues have gone straight at one point, but in the end, they always eventually go right back to their old ways again. And Trickster? He's the biggest flake of them all. He made antigravity boots just so he could do a few flips and tumbles on a tightrope. With all the inventions he's made over the years? He doesn't need to rob people for the money. He  _enjoys_  it. Everything the Trickster does, he does because he wants to, because it's  _fun_. Desk jobs? Comfy and safe, but not fun. Eventually, he'll get bored and go right back to making problems for people. They  _always_  do.”

“No, they don’t,” Wally said, surprised by his own conviction. “People can change.”

Hunter looked at him incredulously. “Of course, people do. But with some criminals, there’s just something  _wrong_  with them. They don’t have the ability to change under their own willpower. The one thing all Rogues have in common is that they’re deluded. They think they’re perfect, that nothing  _needs_  to be changed.”

“You’re making them sound like a bunch of... flat...” he struggled to find the right words to say. “...I don’t know. It just sounds like shallow insight.”

“They’re a group of sociopaths.  _Narcissistic_  sociopaths,” Hunter said, defensive of his stance. “I’m surprised their group hasn’t fallen apart by now, but since it hasn’t happened yet, I’m just counting the days until they rip each other apart. They hate each other, you know. Each Rogue has a sort of superiority complex where they think they’re the most important member of the group. Their teammates, they don’t see them as anything other than tools—”

“ _Alright_. I got it,” he cut in impatiently before Hunter could keep going on with his mild tirade. Wally knew it was better to keep his silence, but he couldn’t help himself. He just really didn’t want to hear Hunter’s thoughts on the subject anymore. Wally wasn’t a part of the group, not a real member. They never really made Wally do anything, aside from an occasional tax on his cuts, and when he’d needed help, they  _came_  for him. It was hard to associate Hunter’s profile with the people he knew.

Yet something about the assessment felt uncannily right, and the fact that Wally’s gut instinct was to agree with Hunter made him uncomfortable. Was he just that easy to manipulate? By the Rogues? By Hunter’s opinions? He was struck by a sudden feeling of paranoia, being used without even realizing it.

“Why do you care so much?” Hunter asked, and Wally couldn’t bring himself to meet his eyes, knowing the kind of suspicion he would see in them and knowing it was well-deserved.

“I don’t,” he said quickly as he brainstormed ways to deflect the questioning. “It’s something about  _you_  that’s bothering me.”

Hunter looked a little thrown off by the comment, as if he had no idea where he went wrong. He opened his mouth to say something, maybe to argue or to ask for an explanation, but he was interrupted by someone knocking on the door, and Wally let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Hunter made a face, looking a little stunned by the idea of having two visitors at once. “...I’ll get that.” he said awkwardly, climbing off the bed and grabbing his crutches as he limped out of the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...This is not where I wanted to cut the scene.
> 
> Edit: Also, gonna livestream JL episodes on Saturdays. If you're interested, stop by my tumblr sometime there'll be a link that day at some point or something.


	8. Chapter 8

A little stung, Hunter ignored Wally’s relieved sigh as he left the room. The redhead had been on edge, lately. It started the day Wally asked for help for his psychology classes, but there were these moments where Wally wouldn’t look him in the eye. Hunter kind of wished he’d kept his mouth shut and hadn’t started ranting in the first place. It’s not as if Wally understood criminals like he did. He’d never understand. 

Hunter opened the door and stared. 

“Ashley? What’re you doing here?” he asked. 

His ex-girlfriend stood in the doorway. “Well, the past few days, a certain really cute friend of yours has been coming in, like, every three days to get you guys desserts, and today, I needed an excuse to come over and see you, so I thought, hey, I’ll bring you some desserts myself. I don’t deliver just for anyone, by the way,” she announced, walking in past Hunter before he could even invite her in. 

“I feel special,” he said as she dropped a bag in his hand. “So what is it?”

“Shoofly pie.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Hunter said, “but that’s not what I’m talking about. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to ask you about your Thanksgiving plans,” she said. “Wondering if you wanted to come over to my family’s this year.”

“But... we’re not dating, though,” Hunter said slowly. 

Ashley scoffed. “Really? Hadn’t noticed,” she said sarcastically. She cringed just slightly before moving on. “Anyway, my mom was asking about you the other day. I know last year, plans kind of fell through, but I thought this year, we could try again.”

“As friends?” Hunter asked.

“If you want,” she said.

An invitation for more. Hunter almost gave in to impulse, but he caught himself before opening his mouth, remembering the reason their relationship ended in the first place. Either way, he couldn’t. 

“Actually, I’m going to have dinner with Barry and Iris,” Hunter said. “I mean, sorry, they already asked me earlier and—”

“I  _get_  it,” Ashley said in an exasperated voice. “You don’t need to make excuses, it’s a family holiday. You’re allowed to spend it with your family. But...?”

“But if I hadn’t already had plans, I wouldn’t have minded spending it with a friend,” he said, placing extra emphasis on the last part. 

Ashley paused and then nodded, a little disappointed but always a good sport. She looked past Hunter, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Wally?”

The redhead had stuck his head out of the bedroom to see what was going on. 

“Ah...shley, right?” Wally said. 

“Hey, Wally,” she greeted. She turned back to Hunter. “Am I interrupting something?” 

“Wally asked me about the Rogues. I was showing him some of the profiles I did on them,” Hunter explained and then sighed in anticipation of Ashley’s bark of laughter. 

“Hunter, sweetheart, if you needed an expert on the Rogues, you should have directed him to me,” she said, marching over towards Wally. “May I?” she asked, gesturing inside once she opened the door. 

“Are you really asking for permission?” Hunter asked. 

“Call it courtesy. I want to give you an opportunity to back out before I school you,” she grinned. 

“Oh, by all means, you can try,” he said, taking his crutches and walking in front of her, opening the door wider for her to walk in. In the meantime, Wally had backed up from the door, glancing from Hunter to Ashley with a confused expression on his face. 

“You do this stuff too?” Wally asked

“I’m not just a waitress,” Ashley grinned. 

“Ashley helps out at her mom’s cafe, but she’s also a TA,” Hunter said. 

“Same class, different time,” she said. “So! Where did I stop you guys?”

Right in the middle of Hunter making an ass of himself. It was too easy for him to get carried away by his work sometimes. He hated the Rogues, but he loved profiling them, reducing them to words on a sheet of paper. It made their actions feel less personal to him. 

He caught Wally glancing at him, looking a little unsure as to whether he actually wanted to continue this conversation. Wally wouldn’t understand. He didn’t know that Hunter and Zoom were the same people, fighting criminals for five long years and putting so much effort into trying to fix the city. To Wally, it looked as if Hunter was completely fixated on someone else’s issues when Central’s problems  _were_  his problems. 

Criminals could be rehabilitated, the analytical side of Hunter knew this. In fact, crime rates would be greatly reduced if the city could tackle the recidivism rates. But he was also Zoom, a first responder, and his greatest priority was protecting the civilians, which could only really be done by fighting the criminals. Someone else could focus on fixing them.

And making sure they stay that way, Hunter thought darkly to himself, his mind returning to the Trickster. 

Wally picked up the Trickster’s folder. “I was just asking Hunter about—”

“Former Rogues,” Hunter interrupted, plucking the folder out of Wally’s hand and closing it before Ashley could notice it. He really had no idea how she felt about the Trickster, who had taken her father’s place in the FBI. It was a sore spot for Hunter, but Ashley had always had a better sense of self-control. He ignored Wally’s questioning look. 

“Oh, man, have you gotten to Lisa?” Ashley asked. 

“Who?” Wally asked.

“Lisa Snart. Captain Cold’s younger sister,” Hunter explained, locating her folder and opening it to show Wally a photo of a young woman. “She went by the Golden Glider.”

Wally spent several moments staring at the photo, trying to figure out what to say. “...Not much family resemblance.”

Ashley grinned at that. “I know, right?” she said. “She’s so pretty. And Captain Cold is so...”

“Wrinkled,” Hunter finished flatly. “She probably put those lines on his face. Having a sadistic maniac for a sister would do that to you. She ran around on these, hm, skates. Low friction, razor-sharp.”

“Lubrilon?” Wally read out loud, looking at the folder. “Ouch.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Hunter said, sporting a few scars from the few encounters he had had with her. “Can’t say I miss her.”

“What happened?” Wally asked. 

“She died,” he answered. “The Top was put in a coma a while ago. She found a new boy toy named Chillblaine.”

“I never heard of him.”

“He was kind of a nobody,” Ashley said. “In fact, the only notable thing he ever did was kill Lisa Snart and then supposedly get killed by the Rogues.”

“Supposedly? He  _has_  to be dead,” Hunter said. Ashley scoffed. 

“What?” Wally asked them. “Was it a 'no body' thing?”

“No, there was a body all right,” Ashley said. "We just don't know if it's the guy who killed Lisa.”

“But there was strong evidence pointing to the fact that the suspect we arrested for her murder  _was_  the murderer,” Hunter argued. 

“Evidence provided and interpreted by a costumed vigilante who fights crimes in yellow pajamas and can't even testify on the stand,” she said derisively. “One: We have no solid evidence proving that man was Chillblaine. Two: Chillblaine's death itself was suspicious and doesn't follow any of the Rogues' MO.”

Hunter backtracked at Ashley's comment on Zoom, a little hurt, but refused to back down. The possibility that they gone after the wrong man was unthinkable. “Just because it can't be proved in court doesn't mean it's not true. And that was Captain Cold's little sister and the Top's girlfriend. Chillblaine was killed by someone who could pass through mirrors. Do you know anyone who can do that?”

“If they caught Chillblaine, they would’ve lynched him and put him up somewhere for display as a lesson to other criminals,” Ashley said. “Chillblaine's death was too clean. Too unemotional.”

“Top was in a coma and Lisa immediately found another man,” Hunter said. “There's a pretty good chance they were killing Chillblaine out of principle, rather than furious vengeance.”

“The Rogues display a lot of sociopathic qualities, and we’ve both agreed that they are all, to some extent, narcissists, which accounts for many of their own difficulties working together,” Ashley argued. “Like trying to steer a pack of wild animals. But they still manage to function relatively well as a group—”

“Relatively well? The group is in constant turmoil with all their in-fighting. They break up once a year,” he said. 

“And they always get back together,” Ashley said. “It’s a dysfunctional relationship, but still a relationship. Their narcissism is the reason why they can’t get along, but it’s also the reason they won’t stay apart. It’s like parents with narcissistic disorders, their children serve as a major source of self-esteem. The Rogues are pathological narcissists and see themselves as the alphas to their team, which creates turmoil, but they also see their team as extensions of themselves, which adds to a sense of possessiveness. Chillblaine killed one of their own. If they got him, they’d leave the body for everyone to find as a message or a lesson.”

“But it’s  _stupid_ ,” Hunter said. 

“I’m not denying that!” Ashley exclaimed, slowly failing to keep a straight face. Hunter couldn’t help grinning either.

“I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into,” Wally muttered, a hand over his eyes. Somewhere during Ashley and Hunter’s debate, Wally had stopped listening, closing the Golden Glider’s folder in favor of Captain Cold’s. 

Hunter knew the dossier well enough. It was all his research—he wrote it up himself. Drunk father was an ex-cop whose abuse instilled a hatred for authority. Eventually ran away and left his sister behind with that man. Half-halfheartedly attempted to resume familial duties when his sister copied his criminal behavior. Sister's psychosis discouraged him from taking full responsibility for her actions in their partnership. Sister's death acted as a catalyst as he recruited a team, now known as the Rogues, and took on a more heavy-handed approach with an emphasis on punishment like his father before him. Obviously terrible for keeping children disciplined, as proven by the Snart siblings' choice of lifestyle, but apparently effective in keeping seemingly unmanageable criminals in line.

“Who’s this one?” Ashley asked. She tugged the Kid’s folder out of the stack, unlabeled and thinner than the rest. 

“A new guy,” Hunter said, as she sorted through the content. Most of the file consisted of little notes scribbled in his spare time. “He’s a speedster who calls himself the Kid. There’s no official police record of him yet, but once we get one, I’ll be able to put a proper name on his folder. Most people don’t even realize he exists.”

“What do we have on him?” Ashley asked. 

“Not much,” Hunter said. “What I’m looking at is a young adult, a thin frame, light-colored hair.”

“That’s it?” Wally asked, looking mildly amused.

Hunter scowled a little at his impression of his abilities. As if his deductive skills were limited to describing the physical attributes of a man in a photo.

“He’s a speedster, but he can’t run as fast in his preferred suit. And he has  _expensive_  taste in clothes. This indicates a level of vanity that implies a lower social class than average. You can argue that he could have grown up with expensive taste, but he  _knows_  no one would recognize him in those clothes—he doesn’t wear expensive clothing on a regular basis.”

“That shows a lot of foresight,” Ashley said, skimming the stray notes. “But you describe him here as reckless. Which means he’s probably young, maybe late teens or early twenties, and highly intelligent. Maybe even a college student.”

“Exactly,” Hunter said.

“What about victimology?” she asked. 

“He strikes at seemingly random intervals in random areas, but there’s a pattern. He... well, he strikes certain areas at certain times to avoid police presence, which means he has some knowledge of law enforcement,” Hunter said, carefully skirting the subject as to how the Kid had been avoiding him and the Flash. “Geographical profiling indicates a residence in the mid-west side of town, which is a pretty decent area to live in. I’d venture a guess and say he grew up poor but reached a level of financial stability. Unlike the other Rogues who'll go after any high-profit target, the Kid’s preferred targets are usually lower in risk and profit. Chain stores and civilians. Pickpocketing with his ability ensures that he'll almost never get caught doing that, so he's a lot less reserved when it comes to stealing directly from people's pockets on the street. The Kid steals from large stores for profit. He steals from people because he can't stop himself.”

“Not bad,” Ashley said, looking impressed. “Sounds solid. I think he’s slowly starting to change his MO, though. With exposure to the Rogues, he’s slowly starting to venture a little out of his comfort zone. I mean, looking at your notes chronologically, I think he’s learning, and he’s learning fast.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem,” Hunter sighed. “Wally? You’ve been quiet?”

“Mostly just listening,” Wally said. “I don’t really have anything to say.”

“Here, take a look,” Ashley said, handing him the folder. “Some insight from the... what’re you majoring in?”

“Chemistry.”

Wally squinted at her, not sure if her snort was worth getting annoyed over. He looked down at the contents of the folder, and Hunter froze as Wally’s fingers found the edge of a plastic baggy. He pulled it out, staring at Hunter as he did before looking back down at. 

“...Nope,” Wally said, promptly putting it back.

Ashley sent Wally and Hunter a curious glance, not sure of what just happened. 

“I’ve got nothing,” Wally added with a deliberately casual shrug, closing the folder. 

“Well, no one really gets them,” Ashley said. “That’s kind of the fun part.”

“Doesn’t it feel a little intrusive?” Wally said, looking a little bothered all of a sudden. Which was understandable, with him quietly finding the drugs that Hunter had confiscated and hidden from him. “Keeping all of their information on file like this?”

“It’s my job,” Hunter said. 

“But it’s not mine,” he replied. 

Hunter couldn’t deny the fact that he was a little disappointed. He thought Wally would be a little more interested in this, but it only seemed to make the redhead more uncomfortable in his presence.

“I guess you might feel bad about it at first, but after awhile, the feeling goes away,” Hunter tried to explain. 

“Harsh,” Wally said.

“But true. You see a lot of people like him. People dissatisfied with their childhoods. They come from abusive backgrounds and never mature emotionally. And then they do what all other emotionally stunted kid would do and get violent. It's the same pattern, over and over and over.”

“Actually, I have to agree with Wally,” Ashley said, surprising Hunter. “You are too young to be talking like a jaded old man.”

“I am not. I mean, I’m not jaded,” Hunter corrected himself, though it wasn’t completely true. He  _was_  tired. There’d never be any admitting it, though. Not when people wouldn’t even understand why he was tired, that he spent his nights chasing down neverending leads on dangerous criminals. Not when Robin had gotten into this line of work at such a young age—seven years of fighting crime and still going strong. He had all of Hunter’s respect and, perhaps, a tad bit of resentment for how tireless the younger hero was. “Look, you can understand why people do what they do, and you can sympathize with them, but you can’t let it get in the way of doing what you have to do.”

“Yeah, all right,” Wally said in a light voice, though he was chewing the side of his lip. A bad habit, Hunter noted. He resisted the urge to tell him to mind his fidgeting because his tendency to bite his lip was a little distracting and a major tell. Hunter was mostly annoyed by the fact that Wally still seemed a little uneasy with him, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Not when Wally was such a private person and Hunter had put on a huge display on just how much that didn’t matter. He knew more than Wally would ever willingly let on.

He knew Wally had a poor relationship with his father and that things were complicated with his mother, who’d once left him in Nebraska with her ex-husband. He knew Wally used to be a different person—bolder and upbeat and sociable—but now he focused on facts and science and anything that had nothing to do with people. He used his intelligence to push himself far above his peers. The further above them he was, the further away from them he could get. He could compile a list of reasons why Wally had become so deliberately withdrawn. People didn't put so much effort into changing who they were on a whim. Determining why Wally would do it was just a matter of listing traumas and gauging reactions until Hunter hit the right one. 

He could dig deeper and deeper until he had all of Wally laid out before him like a map, but if there was anything Hunter had learned so far, it was that he wasn’t welcome and Wally would rather be left alone with his thoughts. Hunter couldn’t deny that it frustrated him. Curiosity was what brought him to Wally, and he wasn’t allowed to indulge. 

The things he did for this guy.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to point out in the last chapter but that part at the beginning where Hunter was "a little stung", I always imagined him being all, like, "FINE. DON'T find me interesting and impressive. SEE IF I CARE. :(" And now for a redhead that I'm sure a few of you guys don't care about.

It didn’t matter how pricey it was, Hartley was never really fond of hotels. The cybernetic implants in his ears were prone to picking up stray sounds coming from other bedrooms. Still, it had its advantages. Meetings behind closed doors, whether it was an affair between two lovers or an exchange of information, were always filled with secrets, and secrets were profitable. Except now Piper had a secret too. 

He straightened at the sound of the door opening and closing behind him, and the light footsteps brought back a memory of feet gliding across the air. Hartley looked up just as an arm was slung around his neck in an overly friendly manner. 

“If we keep on meeting up like this, people are going to talk,” a familiar voice said into his ear, and he could practically hear the smirk from the smugness of his voice. 

“Get off, James,” Hartley said irritably, pushing the arm off over his shoulder. The former Trickster laughed and backed off, his hands raised peaceably. “People  _won't_  talk. Not unless you've  _told_  them,” he added with a note of accusation in his voice. 

“I smell an insinuation,” James said, dropping his briefcase on the desk beside Hartley and jumping on the bed. He grabbed the remote control and turned on the television to flip through the channels. 

“Gambi,” he said to James. “You spoke to Gambi. Told him you were looking for me.”

“Well, I  _was_  looking for you. How else would I have found you?” James asked him, in his usual warped brand of logic. No, it wasn't quite warped. It was just absurdly simple, considering James's notoriety as a con artist. An ex-con, Hartley reminded himself. He probably did it on purpose.

“You know I can’t be associated with you anymore. If you told Gambi, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the Rogues hear you're back in town. They'll put two and two together, and there's no point in trying to disappear if they know where I'm going to disappear to.”

“Better skip town fast then,” James said blithely, as if he hadn't planned it in the first place. Hartley could never be sure about the motives behind James’s actions, but he was pretty sure he knew that if the Rogues found out the two of them were seeing each other, Hartley would have to move faster. The irritation that came with working with James was almost nostalgic. He always followed whatever orders he was given, but always with the usual Trickster flourish that left everyone around him frustrated with his ability to find loopholes in everything. “I have the paperwork all here. Amnesty for your cooperation. All we need is your signature.”

Hartley straightened the briefcase James had left on the table and flipped the latch open. Inside was a single file of legal documents, with helpful post-it notes thoughtfully placed in places James thought Hartley ought to be paying attention to. 

“No big deal, it’s just the point of no return...” Hartley muttered under his breath, skimming the contract for any fancy double-talk that would leave him in some legal bind. Not that legality was a big deal to Hartley, but he was  _trying_  to turn his life around.

“...You're absolutely sure you want to go through this?” James asked him after allowing several minutes for Hartley to read the contract. For once, his expression serious, and once again Hartley was struck by how different James was from the Trickster he once found familiar. 

The striped pants were gone, replaced by slacks that matched his work clothes. The suit that practically screamed “FBI!” was a vast improvement from the flashy colors and striped tights, and Hartley unexpectedly found himself missing the cape. But the Trickster wasn't completely gone. The Rogue Hartley once knew was still there, in the constant waves of his hands, the quirky rises and falls in his shoulders, the shocking orange tie that rebelled against the tame blue button-up shirt, and the self-confident smirk that marked a long con in action. 

Hartley knew very well he was the one being conned. He would be doing all the legwork, and James would be getting his friend back and on his side. The question felt odd. The Trickster was never uncertain; even when he was wrong, he would waltz on as if nothing happened, and no one would ever be sure if his error was orchestrated or not.

If he tried hard enough, he could almost pretend James was being sincere. It didn’t matter, though. Hartley wasn't going to shy away at the first sign of hard work. 

“I'm tired of running from the law. Fighting for no real cause. No worthwhile payout. I've been doing this long enough, and the novelty's wearing off,” he said honestly, and he knew James could partly sympathize, at least. They were bored of the game, and it was time to change the rules. They never cared about the money. That was what had set them apart from the other Rogues. “I can’t believe I’m actually going through with this. I can’t believe  _you_  actually did this.” 

“The art of the long con requires skill and patience, but the payout is always rewarding,” James answered. Hartley wondered if he was a part of the con, the mark, or the payout, and then he scoffed at his train of thought. With James, one never really knew where one plan ended and another began. Hartley was probably a mix of all three, lured away from the Rogues to become a part of a greater game and an ally in another of James’s schemes. “I’m always willing to pull a few strings for an old friend. I have big plans for the future, and, Hartley, my heart, I want you to be a part of them.”

James’s choice of wording sounded just wonderful enough to sound ominous. It only made Hartley even warier of his lighthearted tone and vague intentions. He was really jumping in with both feet here, something he never would’ve done for any of the other Rogues. The fact that he would get involved with James, of all people, made little sense. You don’t trust a Trickster. Shouldn’t, anyway. 

He  _did_  know that James’s plans involved fighting for the good guys. Even if James decided he was bored of this new life, he’d see all his plans through before moving on.

“I don’t even know what the plans are,” he replied sullenly. 

“We’re going after  _everyone_ ,” James said, which was either still vague or terrifyingly specific. 

“Whoa, whoa, no,” Hartley said immediately. The tip of his pen, which had been hovering over the dotted line, ended up slapped against the table, and Hartley crossed his arms in front of his chest. “If you are looking to take on Justice League-level criminals, I'm not getting on board the crazy train with you.” 

“Oh, we’re not going to get anywhere by fighting aliens that can level a building with the flick of a finger,” he said, waving off Hartley’s concerns. 

“Then who—?”

“Don't worry your little head about that,” he said, standing up to give him a patronizing pat on the head. “I won’t lead you astray.”

“Wow. I’ve never heard you outright lie to me before,” Hartley said flatly, recalling all of James’s past half-truths and misleading facts.

“Well, you can do a lot more good with me than the Rogues. I’d  _treat_  you better. That’s no lie, is it?” James asked, switching angles as smoothly as ever.

“No, that’s just blatant emotional manipulation,” he muttered. Hartley swiped the hand from his head and finally, after a brief moment of hesitation, picked the pen up and signed the deal. “...I feel like I’m going to regret this.” He was tough, he was smart, and he could probably survive anything James tossed him into. 

But the feeling as if he were betraying the Rogues remained. 

“You made the right choice,” James told him, not directly responding to Hartley’s comment. He gave the now-former Pied Piper a solid slap on his back, but his reassurances really left Hartley feeling uneasy. Though they’d been close during their shared time as criminals, the Trickster had never really been the coddling sort. Ever. 

Hartley made an unconvinced sound, but he consoled himself with the fact that he wasn’t going to miss them or be missed. Absence made the heart grow fonder, but they were dicks. On the other hand, Len wasn’t too bad. Professional, by Rogue standards, and didn’t give a damn about Hartley’s personal life.

And then there was the Kid. Hartley was right from the start. He had a decent head on his shoulders. Soft, compared to the others, but it meant his sentiments were closer to Len’s cold pragmatism than the rest of the team, which made him a smart addition to the group. Len and Hartley could use a bit more muscle on their side of the group. Well, Len could, anyway. 

It hit Hartley, and not for the first time, that he had dragged the Kid onto the team only to leave him there.

But Hartley could at least say the Kid had learned from him. He wasn’t a helpless brat, despite his name, and would probably do all right on his own with the Rogues. 

“Thinking about that Kid again?” James asked. “Forget about him. ...Or don’t. Could always use a speedster in our pocket.”

It had occurred to Hartley before to bring the Kid aboard with this. The Kid, Wally, would probably go along with him. He was more attached to Hartley than anyone else on the team. And Hartley actually wondered sometimes if maybe the Kid would enjoy working on the right side of the law. His heart didn’t seem to set on crime.

“No. Len needs him more than we do,” Hartley said. 

“You’re sweet, Hart,” James laughed, ignoring Hartley’s irate scoff at the play on his name. “But you realize this means he’s going down with the crew?”

“He’s the only one with a clean record,” Hartley said. “A way out if things go wrong. If the Rogues take a bad turn, he can just quit and disappear and no one will ever hear of him again.”

“He's not going to stop,” James said. “Maybe it started off about the money, but that's not it anymore. He's doing this for the fun and the thrill.”

“You've never even met him,” he argued, but his friend shook his head. 

“Don’t need to. I know his type. He’s just like you and me,” James said, nodding knowingly. “We've all got our vices.”

“What's yours?” he asked James with a small smile. He expected his question to be simply brushed off, and James did brush it off, but he caught the sharp glint in James's expression as he smiled back at him. 

“Maybe I should show you,” he said, his voice dropping an octave as he gave Hartley a challenging smirk.

Hartley didn't like the devious look in his eye. He felt thrown off once again by the stark difference between James Jesse and the Trickster. As the Trickster, Hartley never felt cornered or nervous of him. The Trickster had essentially been a child in the body of a man, no more predatory than a twelve year old boy engaging in a few childish pranks.

As much as he owed James for the opportunity presented him today—a new life, a new start—he just wasn't comfortable with the Trickster, All Grown Up and in the FBI. He had changed since he had left the Rogues, and Hartley wasn't sure if he liked this new Trickster. James. 

Hartley stood up. “As fun as  _that_  sounds,” he said wryly as he began to head towards the door, “we're technically done here.”

“Nooo, we're not,” James protested, taking a short running jump and landing on the bed in a way that only an acrobat or an overgrown child would. “We need to celebrate! The turning of a new leaf. The Bureau's paying all our expenses. We've got all night. Let's do something  _fun_.”

And if it weren't for the fact that Hartley's ears could pick up every beat of his own heart, he would've thought it had skipped a few. 

James took Hartley's dubious steps toward the bed as a quiet agreement. “Great. I already ordered room service on the way up,” he grinned, rolling back on the bed and reaching backwards to grab the top corners of the blankets. He rolled over to make room for Hartley and pulled the blankets out of their tucked position by those corners, wrapping himself up in a ball of blankets. “FYI, I  _will_ be hogging the covers tonight.”

Hartley wondered if James was actually buying his stoic attitude or if he was just being polite by not mentioning Hartley's nerves. Both options seemed rather out of character for James, who had never been gullible or well-mannered as long as Hartley had known him. The complete dissonance between the Trickster Hartley had once known and the man sitting next to him now left him feeling a little wistful—he missed the Trickster—but it made it a little easier to come to terms with the fact that things had changed permanently.

He could do this, Hartley told himself. James was different. James wasn't the Trickster he once knew. He could deal with this James, who lacked the original Trickster's vibrant personality and slaphappy attitude. Trickster had gone and grown up and wasn't coming back to him.

But then James had to ruin the illusion by flashing him an impish grin and turning on the television to the Flaming C. 

There was a hint of the original left, Hartley silently confirmed as James began to sing along with the theme song. Enough of the Trickster left to stir up old feelings of nostalgia and fondness. And when James then began to recite the episode's dialogue perfectly, line for line, with the appropriate embellishments and gestures, Hartley had to admit, he missed this—being with the biggest idiot in the world—and, okay, he was definitely maybe a little in love all over again.

Dammit. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David's gonna be maaaaad.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to give Wally a pat on the back sometimes.

tK:  _Where are you?_  
tK:  _I’ve been all over town._  
tK:  _And I’m really hungry. This is your fault._  
tK:  _I’ve been working with that chemist, the one you met? Working on a project._  
tK:  _Could really use a second opinion to make sure I’m not about to do something really dumb._  
tK:  _But more importantly, I think he might’ve noticed something and I don’t know what to do._  
tK:  _He keeps asking about you, I have no idea what to even say your name is._  
tK:  _I need something more forgettable than Hartley. Who the hell names their kid Hartley?_  
tK:  _Where the hell are you?_

Wally stopped for a lunchbreak. This had not how he had planned to spend the past few days, searching for Piper, who hadn’t returned any of his messages since the week before. The burrito was tasteless in his mouth. Wally wasn’t in the mood for food, but he’d been burning calories all day, searching every place he’d ever met up or gone to with Piper, only to come up empty. It made Wally anxious. He didn’t know how else to contact Piper. If he disappeared, Wally might never know what happened to him.

He didn’t have long before he’d have to quit his search for Piper and meet up at the lab.

Wally polished his food off in seconds and went right back to looking before his phone began to ring. He picked the phone up and saw the name flash brightly on the screen. PP. 

With a low grumble, Wally irately picked up the phone. “I’ve been trying to get to you for two days!” he snapped. 

“It’s Cold.”

He paused. “Why do you have Piper’s phone?” he asked. Had it been lost? Did something happen to Piper?

“Just stop your search and get to the damn bar,” he said. 

Not sure if he should be concerned or angry, Wally hung up and ran back to the bar. That should’ve been the  _first_  place he looked, but Piper should’ve called him. There was no way Wally could’ve run all over the city at his speed without Hartley hearing him. 

Wally got to the bar at record speed, bursting in through the doors and expecting to see Piper sitting there with the rest of the Rogues. 

He wasn’t. 

“Where the hell is he?” Wally asked, growing frustrated again. He had risked running all over the city in costume in broad daylight, even after the Flash and Hunter’s team had made it clear they were after him. 

“The Trickster was in town,” Heat Wave said, idly staring into his drink before finishing it off. “He took Piper.”

“Well, then why aren’t we getting him back?” he demanded. 

“Because Piper went with him,” Top answered. 

Wally stared at him, not really comprehending the words until Digger spoke up. “Piper’s a faggot for Trickster.”

The next thing he knew, Digger was on the ground, drink spilled and chair upturned, holding onto his bleeding nose, and Cold was dragging Wally away from the other Rogues by the back of his collar. 

“I think the fucker broke my nose!” Digger shouted, holding onto his face while his nose bled.

“Sorry. My hand slipped,” Wally glared back at Digger. “Besides, it’s not as if it hasn’t happened a thousand times before.” 

“ _Back off_ ,” Cold hissed.

“How does he get off calling Piper a faggot when he’s the one wearing that dumbass boomerang ascot?” Wally asked, as loud and clear as he could for Digger to hear. “Oh, I’m sorry, I mean  _scarf_.”

Digger recovered and lunged at Wally, but Top jumped up and got in between them, arms apart to keep them separate. “Calm down!” he shouted at them both, glancing back at the barkeep, who was watching them closely, ready to take action if he needed to. “Kid, I know you have a lot of respect for Piper, but he really is gay.”

Some of the tension in Wally’s shoulders melted away, replaced by surprise, which Cold took as a cue to release him. 

“Oh.” Wally took the opportunity to punch Digger in the face a second time. Just on principle.

“ _Kid!_ ” Cold growled. 

“ _My hand slipped_!” Wally repeated. The Top grabbed him this time, grabbing him from underneath the arm. He put Wally in a painful armlock, using his leverage to lift Wally’s feet off the floor. Digger hit Wally back, once in the stomach and once in the face, and Wally managed to get a few good flailing kicks in before Cold roughly shoved Digger back, keeping the Kid away from them. 

“Put him down!” Cold ordered Top, who tried to protest but stopped at the sight of the cold gun aimed at both him and Wally. “I said put him down. And you, Kid, take a walk.”

Wally’s feet touched the floor. His fist still ached from when he’d hit Digger, and he was reminded painfully of Piper’s lessons. “But—” he tried.

“Take. A. Walk. That’s strike two, Kid. Come back when you’ve cooled off.”

“But he—” Wally pointed at Digger, who glared back at him venomously. 

“Piper doesn’t need you standing up for him. He  _ditched_  you,” he said mercilessly. Wally stood there, frozen in place and unable to find a proper response to that. “Get over it.”

Wally glared at them before mutely turning around to leave. He distantly heard Cold growling a lecture at Digger about using his goddamn brain, and he ignored Digger’s pointed remark at how sensitive the Kid over nothing.

Gritting his teeth, Wally sprinted away from the bar to check the only place he had left to check, the storage facility that Piper used as a place for Wally to practice his lockpicking. He had mentioned offhandedly before that he’d owned the building. There was no way Piper just picked up and left without saying anything. 

Wally ran up the fence, clearing the top in one clean, practiced motion. His landing wasn’t quite as smooth, and he found himself stumbling and nearly falling to his knees as his feet hit the ground. The fact that it had been Piper who had drilled the move into him in the first place left a bitter taste in his mouth. Wally forced his way through the door and walked inside the building, and despite the darkness, he could still see enough. The warehouse had been emptied. 

“Looking pretty  _disconcerted_. Something not where it’s supposed to be?” 

Shadows weren’t supposed to talk. Wally jumped, eyes peering into the dark in search of the speaker, but all he could get was a vague outline, which he never would’ve noticed if the figure hadn’t spoken up. 

It wasn’t Piper. 

“What do you want, Boy Wonder?” he asked as Robin approached him, the faint lines of his form growing more distinct 

“How about my grappling gun?” he asked a little crossly. 

“Ah hah, you'll have to pry that from my cold, dead fingers. I’m pretty attached,” Wally said, walking over to the switch and turning the lights on. 

“We’re alone. It’s just you and me,” Robin said, completely failing to reassure Wally. There was no ‘just’ anything when it came to these people, no guarantee that he was telling the truth, and no discernible reason for him to have announced his appearance in the first place. He could have kept his advantage, attacking Wally when his guard was down. Uncomfortable with staying in the same spot when he didn’t understand what was going on, Wally began pacing back and forth. “My team’s pulling out of Central. Chasing after you is apparently a waste of the resources.”

“Good of you to finally realize that. It only took you thousands of dollars in collateral damage,” Wally said. “I guess I can start worrying about you guys again once Zoom’s back on his feet?”

Robin twitched at the mention of his friend but didn’t react to the small barb. “You might want to start worrying sooner than that. I’ve been hearing rumors that everyone from dirty businessmen to mercenaries and assassins are moving in on Central. The fact that my team’s being ordered to leave means that this city is on the League’s watch list.”

Oh. Wally felt a chill crawl down his spine at the realization. He didn’t have to worry about Flash and the Junior Justice League now. Just Flash and the Real Thing.

“I’m assuming you have a reason for warning off the guy you were supposed to be chasing down,” Wally said questioningly.

“I need to know what you’ll do when you’re caught,” Robin said. 

“How should I know?” Wally asked, feeling uneasy at the thought.

“You’re smart. You’re careful. You’ve never given it any thought?”

Wally paused, momentarily breaking his pace and wondering why the heck Robin even cared when it finally came to him. He’d forgotten about Robin’s secret identity and how it could be used as leverage if he’d been caught. So long as no one called his bluff. “Just looking out for yourself, huh?” he asked Robin. 

“And Flash. And Zoom,” Robin said, which made Wally pause. He didn’t recall sharing that fact with anyone ever, but Robin apparently knew that he knew their secrets too. Wally panicked under Robin’s appraising gaze and had to resist the urge to just leave now, convinced that Robin had made some sort of epiphany. Somewhere in Robin’s head, two dots that had just been connected, and Wally didn’t know what it was.

Wally allowed the silence to stretch and continued to pace, hoping that his pause would blend in with the pronounced gap until it felt it had been deliberate. “I haven’t decided yet,” Wally said, continuing to pace. “We’ll see when we get there.”

As he turned, he looked away for just a moment, but a moment was all Robin needed to disappear, leaving Wally standing alone in the empty warehouse, wondering if Robin had pieced something together or if he was just being paranoid. 

Today was not his day.

* * *

The Kid had no reason to look so surprised at the mention of the Flash. 

Back at the cave, Dick was supposed to be overseeing Garth’s training with Artemis, but he couldn’t stop mentally reviewing his latest encounter with the Kid.

Maybe the thief hadn’t realized that Hunter had pieced together the fact that the Kid knew his secret identity. In fact, Dick probably shouldn’t have given away as much as he did, but information often came with a price or a risk. Either way, the Kid didn’t necessarily have to know that Hunter knew his own secret had been partially compromised. 

What didn’t make sense was the fact that the Kid seemed thrown off by the Flash, as if he didn’t understand why Robin thought he knew the Flash’s secret identity. Did he just not know it? Did he not know Zoom’s? Dick’s mind juggled with the possibilities, trying to determine what was premeditated and what was a coincidence. 

No, he  _had_  to know their secret identities. Not only had the Kid planned all of his heists around Barry Allen’s and Hunter’s schedules, but the Kid had discovered Dick’s first tracking device and left it at the Flash’s home. It  _wasn’t_  a coincidence. 

Dick had to entertain the possibility that he had completely misread the Kid as well. There could’ve been some angle he hadn’t taken into account. Maybe the Kid had been thrown off by something else. The Pied Piper’s recent disappearance. Dick’s own animosity. Maybe the Kid hadn’t been thrown off at all. The Kid could have been playing around with him, or Dick could have even misread his pause as hesitation when he was really just taking a moment to think his options over. 

Dick’s thoughts were interrupted by a particularly heavy thud, and he looked up to see Artemis standing over Garth, who was laying flat on his back with a dazed expression. 

“Hunter’s been going easy on you,” Artemis said, staring Garth down with a distinct look of disapproval.

“I would not have agreed with this last month...” Garth said bleakly.

“It’s time for a break,” Dick said, stepping between Artemis and Garth on the sparring ring to lend the Atlantean a hand and pull him back up to his feet. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“We barely finished warm-up,” Artemis argued, glaring at Garth’s back as he quickly retreated. “Couldn’t it wait?”

“I’d rather not. And I’d also like to remind you that we’re trying to build Garth up, not tear him down,” he said to her. 

“When we were fighting the Kid, he got  _pushed_  out of the way,” she said. “Not punched. Not kicked. Pushed. Like a kid on the playground. I’m still not sure if it was okay to laugh or not.”

Dick sent a quick glance at Garth as he disappeared through the door and around the corner to make sure he hadn’t heard. There was no sign of excessive cruelty or mockery in her voice, but Artemis’s bluntness was sometimes a bit overwhelming for someone who wasn’t familiar with her straightforwardness. “He’s a bit inexperienced, I admit—”

“I’m not even sure if he understands the concept of a broken bone.”

“I think you’re being a bit harsh,” Dick said, and when Artemis opened her mouth to argue, he added, “Not everyone grew up learning to fight the way you did. I get that restraint isn’t your thing, and I get that you’re getting frustrated. If you need to let off some steam,  _I’ll_  spar with you. Just  _try_  to play nice with Garth until Hunter comes back, all right?”

She looked tempted to take him up on his offer, but after taking a moment to review her own actions, Artemis shook her head. “Sorry, I’m just...”

“Used to training like a Spartan. Believe me, I get it,” Dick smirked. “Besides, you’d be better off apologizing to Garth. It’s his self-esteem that’s taking a beating, not mine.”

Artemis made an unenthusiastic noise. “Fine. I still think Hunter’s been too easy on him,” she said. “He needs to come back and finish what he started.”

“Oh, believe me, he definitely wants back in,” he snorted. 

“Is he tired of the domestic life already?”

“He’s been asking to use the team’s motorcycles,” Dick grinned. “I told him he needed a license. Anyway, I actually wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot,” she nodded, giving Dick her assent. 

“It kind of has something to do with your family,” he said, giving her another chance to back out. After a brief moment, she nodded again, though she looked less enthusiastic on the subject. Dick couldn’t blame her. “It’s not a secret that you’re, well, Artemis Crock. Everyone in the business nowadays knows that Sportsmaster's daughter is Artemis Crock, and that she’s playing for the other side. What’s stopping them from looking you up and going after you?”

Artemis made a face. “Probably my dad,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a damn about me and my sister in general, but we’re still flesh and blood. He’d take it personally if someone managed to take us down.”

“Is that all?” Dick asked, pretty sure that Hunter didn’t have the same evil guardian angel hovering over his shoulder. His father had been a nasty piece of work, but he was also very, very dead and thus not likely to ward off any danger from his son.

“Well, there is a kind of unofficial rule that you don’t go after a person out of costume or their family, but we both know not everyone follows that rule. Why’re you asking?” Artemis asked before her expression changed, recalling that Dick had been asking because of Hunter. “Someone knows Hunter’s secret identity? ...Was it the Kid? Is that why you’ve been all weird about this mission?”

“Yeah. So far, I’ve found out he knows my identity, probably Batman’s by association, Hunter’s, and the Flash’s. I’ve been worried about what he’s going to do with that information, how he’s found out, and who he’s told,” Dick said. 

“Well, it beats me, but that’s risky business...” Artemis murmured. “The Kid is sitting on a powder keg. Personally, I doubt he’s told anyone.”

“Why?”

“Think of it this way. The Kid is a thief, but he doesn’t necessarily go after only good guys. Good or bad, the only thing that really matters is that his target has what he wants.”

It took Dick a moment to realize what Artemis was getting at. “He has what other bad guys would want, which would make him a target,” he realized. 

“Exactly. Hunter doesn’t have a family like mine. He’s not protected the way I am. That means anyone willing to risk going after Hunter out of costume can call open season on him,” Artemis said. “And we’ve pissed off a lot of people.”

“And Hunter’s pissed off a lot of Rogues.”

“If word gets out that the Kid knows Zoom’s secret, he might as well have a target painted on his back.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost forgot to update today. So you guys really seemed to like that last chapter. I don’t generally reach 20 notes on a post unless it’s the first or last chapter. More kudos than usual too. You guys are awesome. So what did you like? Wally fretting over Piper? Punching Captain Boomerang? Running into Dick? Or was it guru Spartan!Artemis?

Wally frowned and chewed on the eraser of his pencil. Around him, other students scribbled and struggled with their own problems. The exam. Wally had already finished it, taking his time to triple-check his answers and still having over an hour to kill before the rest of the class finished. 

Not that he had to stay. He could just turn it in to the professor and leave, but he was hesitant to leave the quiet of the room. At the beginning of the semester, classes had felt like an utter waste of time, but now, between working his delivery job, moonlighting as a thief, maintaining a steady friendship with Hunter, making a presence among his family, and working with David in his lab, school had become a welcome break from the rest of his life.

On top of that, he had to deal with the Justice League drawing closer to Central. 

Wally sighed, dropping his pencil and packing up his belongings. He had work to do, and he didn't have time to waste, doodling figures in the margin of an exam he had finished fifteen minutes ago. He quietly turned in his test and left the class. 

“Hey.”

Wally jumped at the sound of Hunter's voice, nearly dropping the one notebook he had bothered bringing to class on a test day. He looked to his right to find Hunter waiting for him outside the doorway, looking a little bored as he leisurely shifted his weight from one crutch to the other. 

“Jeez, Hunter, stalker much?” Wally said, looking over his shoulder. A few students inside had looked up to see what had happened, and he quickly shut the door behind him. 

“I needed someone to carry my things for me,” Hunter grinned, nodding his head towards a stack of papers bound together by a number of rubber bands. 

“...You had someone carry your things to the science building just so I could carry your things home?” Wally asked. 

“Well I'm not going to invite just anyone into my home,” he snorted. Wally felt oddly touched by the sentiment, as weird as it was. Then again, seeing as Hunter stashed his Zoom paraphernalia at his apartment, it made sense to limit the access to his apartment to as few people as possible. “Come on, before we miss the shuttle.”

“Another one comes every few minutes,” Wally pointed out, but he picked up Hunter's things, and they started heading towards the stop with the stride of two people used to moving faster than they currently were. 

“Yeah, but I hate waiting,” Hunter said, an opinion that Wally could agree with. 

Even before becoming a speedster, Wally always went everywhere on foot. It was healthy, and, more importantly, it was  _cheap_. Back in the day, saving money had been  _important_ , and over time, the necessity had been downgraded to a healthy habit that Wally was actually pretty proud of. 

Running was a good way to clear his head. It was a way to be alone and allowed him gather his thoughts in peace, and Wally didn't realize just how important that was to him until he was stuck in a crowded bus that moved at a snail's pace and made a stop every three minutes.

Hunter gave Wally a sidelong smirk. For all his claims that he didn’t like public transport, he certainly seemed to enjoy pressuring Wally to join him. But then, misery loves company, and Hunter apparently took certain pleasure in making sure he wasn’t alone in his ordeal. After almost a week of taking the bus to Hunter's place, Wally was still adjusting to being trapped inside a slow-moving object filled with strangers talking too loudly all around him. 

“Twitchy much?” Hunter said, watching Wally fidget next to him. 

“I still don't like buses,” he said, which was true enough, even though he couldn't exactly say he was used to running faster than them. 

“Come on, you can’t tell me you’ve never even been on a school bus,” Hunter said. 

“Tried it. Decided I liked jogging to school better,” Wally said. 

“You know, the more I learn about you, the more I realize you must’ve been one of those smelly nerds,” he said, deliberately leaning away from Wally and nearly falling over when Wally elbowed him. 

“Was not,” Wally argued. “At least I wasn’t voted ‘most likely to do a tailspin and become a serial murderer’ for my high school yearbook.”

Hunter looked offended. “I was  _nominated_ , I didn’t actually—and who  _told_  you that?”

“Ashley.”

“I...” Hunter froze and took a moment to mentally rewind his thoughts, probably having expected Wally to say it was Iris. “Well, she’s wrong!”

“You have to admit, sometimes your behavior is a little stalkerrific,” Wally said. “I mean, look at your bookshelf.”

“That’s my  _work_ , Wally.”

“Your work involves some pretty personal stuff, and I am ninety-nine percent sure I saw a folder with Ashley’s name on it.”

“We were doing a thing,” Hunter insisted, completely failing to establish anything new to Wally.

“I’ve done a lot of things with a lot of people, but it never involved background checks and criminal records,” Wally said, but he paused, thinking over what he just said. He didn’t have time to complete his thoughts when the bus made a sudden, unexpected jerk. Thrown off by the sudden motion, Wally’s head smacked the window beside him, and he winced. Wally opened an eye, expecting to see amusement from Hunter, but he only looked wary, glancing out the windows on watch for  _something_. “What is it?”

“Sorry!” the driver apologized from the front. “Some sort of pothole.”

“Seat belt,” Hunter said idly, only half paying attention to Wally as he leaned out into the aisle to see through the bus driver’s front window. 

“What?” 

“ _Seat belt_ ,” he repeated more tersely, his attention snapping back to Wally as the bus began to sway a second time, and this time it wasn’t stopping, and other passengers were starting to look alarmed. Hunter reached around, trying to grab for something that wasn’t there, and looked around in confusion.

“Buses don’t  _have_  seatbelts,” Wally snapped. 

“Isn’t that a safety hazard?” he shouted. 

“It’s usually not!” 

Hunter swore under his breath and muttered about improvements to the safety regulations of public transport in criminal hotspot cities. He braced an arm against the back of the seat in front of him and his other arm held onto his own, and he motioned for Wally to do the same. “This is going to hurt,” he sulked.

“What’s happening?” Wally said frantically, bracing himself sideways between the seats like Hunter did so they were both facing each other. 

“We’re driving over ice slicks,” he muttered, as the bus began swing violently back and forth, and the next thing Wally knew, he was falling backward. 

The adrenaline that began pumping the moment the bus began losing control made time feel like it was passing in slow motion. As soon as the bus began tipping over onto his side, Wally’s grip slipped off the seat, and he realized in retrospect, he probably should have followed Hunter’s suit more closely. If he’d been facing the window too, he could have broken his fall with his hands. Slightly annoyed that he couldn’t just use his powers to avoid falling entirely, he brought his hands up to cover the back of his head and waited to hit the ground.

Hunter, having been sitting beside him, was now above him, his eyes bursting with a red glow. Unlike Wally, falling in slow motion at the same speed at everyone else, Hunter just dropped. He slid out of his chair and fell on top of Wally. 

He winced, looking apologetic as he put a hand behind Wally’s head, protecting his head from hitting the broken glass window beneath them. Very thoughtful. And a little awkward. Wally remained as still as possible, not even daring to blink or look away, worried that, this close up, Hunter would notice a certain disparity of Wally’s speed compared to other civilians. Once the bus began to slow to a stop and settle, Hunter slid his hand out from under Wally’s head and made a face. He moved his hands, which had been braced on both sides of Wally’s head, and grabbed Wally by the front of his shirt and pulled him slightly to the side but ultimately looked dissatisfied with Wally’s placement. 

After a moment, he rolled his eyes, and flopped down on top of Wally. The red from his eyes dimmed, and it was then that Wally realized that time had changed and was now reverting to something a bit more... normal. 

“...Ow,” Hunter said, crawling off of Wally as if he hadn’t just blatantly used his powers in full view of him. 

His powers. That wasn’t superspeed. The physics at which Hunter moved had been all wrong. Different. And something about him made time strange for Wally too. He always moved fast. Time was never slow, not like that, and it had something to do with Hunter.

Hunter sat up and, after a beat, rolled up off of Wally, grimacing when he moved his bad leg. “Are you okay?” he asked as he grabbed for his crutches, which had fallen under the chair when the bus began to shake. He sounded a little concerned, and Wally realized it was time he spoke up and started moving again. 

He shivered. The ground was cold, unnaturally so this time of the year. “Why is it so  _freezing_?” Wally asked, baffled. 

“Having a guy run around town with a freeze ray will do that,” he said, and he muttered a quiet sorry as he pushed Wally to the side a bit to make room for himself and awkwardly climb back up to his feet. Hunter looked up suddenly, body tense and alert as a spout of flame jetted wildly into the sky. 

“Oh,” Wally and Hunter murmured at the same time.

“We need to get out of here,” Hunter said firmly, his voice calm and steady as if he handled situations like this every day—of course, he probably did. He held a hand out to help haul Wally back up to his feet. They had been sitting near the front of the bus, and the sooner they got out, the sooner the people behind them could too, without trampling over them. 

And since Hunter had helped him up, it was only fair that Wally help him out, letting Hunter use him for support as they lumbered over the seats and out of the bus as quickly as possible. 

They might've been unfortunate enough to have ridden a bus straight into some kind of standoff, presumably between Rogues and the police or Rogues and the Flash, but they were at least lucky enough to have landed with the bus's door facing up, rather than to the ground. Hunter hobbled towards the exit at a determined speed. Wally followed beside him, occasionally glancing at Hunter's face, looking for any sign of red in his eyes, until their eyes met by chance. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” Wally said as they made it to the front. The door of the bus was open but loomed over their heads, just inches beyond reach. Wally knelt down, knees bent and prepared to try and jump and grab onto bus’s doorframe, but Hunter placed a hand on Wally’s shoulder. Wally was willing to risk the shaky handhold, but Hunter apparently wasn’t. 

“I got it. I’ll go first,” he said, and with a little hop, Hunter tossed one of his crutches up. It landed perpendicular to the door frame. He stooped low, and before Wally could protest that Hunter was going to do the same thing Wally had been about to, Hunter jumped up, hands catching the crutch and lifting himself up as though it were just a pull-up bar. 

Though gravity kept his place mostly secure, with Hunter’s weight acting as a sort of anchor for the crutch, it still wasn’t the most secure place to hold onto. The crutch rested partly on the edge of the folding door and slid slightly under his weight, causing him to nearly slip from the door frame. 

Wally found himself instinctively reaching out, one hand grabbing the back of Hunter’s leg just in case he fell, the other slightly flailing and searching for an appropriate part of Hunter’s body to push upwards, which didn’t include bad knee. 

“Wally,” Hunter said, his head peering over the edge after he finally pulled himself completely over. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“What?” 

Hunter rolled his eyes. “My other crutch is still with you,” he said. Wally looked down and realized he had left one down when he had tossed the other up. He reached down and grabbed, holding it up for Hunter to take the other end. “Hold tight.” 

Wally’s grip had only tightened around his end of the crutches at the last minute, and he found his feet being lifted off the ground as Hunter pulled him up. 

“Okay. Wow. Upper body strength. I am impressed,” Wally rambled quietly, climbing up the rest of the way once his shoulders were about level with the door frame. 

“Actually harder than I expected,” Hunter said, his face slightly red from the exertion. He rubbed at his bad leg, and Wally realized from the positioning that he had, of course, used it to brace himself as he pulled Wally up. “My leg’s going to kill me tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” Wally said as the both of them moved to help the people behind them out of the bus.

“Whatever. Good thing you’re a stick,” Hunter said. He grunted slightly as the person after them jumped up, catching one of Wally and Hunter’s hand each, and with a bit of effort, they dragged him up top with them. “If my crutches broke lifting you, that would’ve been embarrassing.”

Wally gave Hunter a pointed look but was unable to find the right words. As they helped three more people up, Wally began to realize the sounds of fighting were still going on. He turned around to look, but it was starting to get pretty crowded. 

“Hey, you kids take off,” one of the men said. “We’ll end up running out of room if everyone gets pulled up here stays up here. We’ve got this handled.”

With a nod of assent, Wally and Hunter crawled towards the edge the bus to climb down the side. Hunter landed lightly on his feet, only silently cringing as his feet hit the concrete. Wally’s landing, on the other hand, was considerably less graceful. Embarrassing, even, but he couldn’t be blamed for that. As he had began climbing off, he was struck in the face by a white blur.

Wally fell backward on the ground with a surprised yell and a sudden ‘oof!’ A little dazed and confused by what happened, Wally spotted the white blur, still flying in the air, and his eyes followed it straight to Captain Boomerang’s hand, a little over a hundred yards away. He wasn’t paying much attention to Wally or the bus. Many cars were upturned and bumper to bumper, collateral damage done in the process of stealing from a bank vault. Just collateral damage, to Captain Boomerang. The attack had been nothing but the result of a misaimed boomerang, thrown in a fight against a vigilante.

“Wally!” Hunter shouted, helping Wally up. “Are you all right?”

“My ass hurts,” he grumbled, pushing himself back up to his feet. “What's going on?” he murmured out loud.

“Looks like Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave. Captain Cold is probably lurking around too, if the ice patch we slipped on is anything to go by,” Hunter answered, glancing at the huge white streak that stretched out beneath the bus across the street. “It’s got to be a big heist. They normally aren’t this flashy.”

“Speaking of which,  _that’s_  not the Flash,” Wally said out loud, seeing a pair of red forms darting between beams of fire and boomerangs. “Neither of them are.” The shade of red was off, and there were far too many colors. The Flash's suit didn't show much skin, and there wasn’t a spot of black on his costume.

“Ah. Red Arrow and Aquarius,” Hunter said, sounding a little unhappy with their presence. He ducked his head slightly, as if they were paying attention or could even see him and Wally from this distance.

Wally recognized their names before he recognized their faces. He had never seen much of the pair before—they didn’t make the news nearly as often as the Justice League and their partners. As one of them rolled towards them to dodge a stream of fire, Wally caught a better glimpse of his face. It was Arsenal. And if Arsenal was the Red Arrow, then Arsenal’s partner was definitely Aquarius.

The vague details of a half-formed idea began to assemble inside his head, a small seed planted for later use that didn't have time to grow to fruition as Wally pushed Hunter aside and dodged their own random stray blast of fire. Somewhere behind them, a person screamed.

He looked up to see a woman clutching her hand, thankfully uncharred by the unbearably hot flames themselves, but still unfortunate enough to have accidentally placed a hand on hot metal in order to right herself. 

“We need to get these people out of here,” Wally realized, but Hunter shook his head. 

“No. We need to find Cold.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been so bad with remembering to update. I’m glad you guys’ve been enjoying these recent chapters.

Hunter’s comment threw Wally for a loop. If anything, Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave should’ve been the greater concern, dangerously using their weapons near people who could get hurt.

“What?” he said, in surprise of Hunter's suggestion. 

“Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave are distractions, and Red Arrow and Aquarius seem to be falling for it,” Hunter said, nodding his head in reference to the fight taking place down the street. “That leaves Cold unaccounted for, and we  _can't_  forget that.”

“People could get hurt,” Wally insisted. He couldn't just say 'You're not Zoom right now, you can't take him on.' He wasn't supposed to know that Hunter was Zoom at all.

“Cold could get away,” Hunter replied, determination gripping his voice. “I'm getting around on one leg. People can get out of here on two. You can too, if you want, but I'm going after Cold.”

'And how about we get out of the way and  _not_  get a big fat arrow painted on their backs for the Rogues?' Wally wanted to say as Hunter refused to hear any more of Wally's protests and did a good impression of a determined man marching off, despite the use of his crutches

Wally gritted his teeth in frustration with, well,  _everything_. Neither of them were even in costume, and here Hunter was, so determined to take on criminals that he wasn't even paying attention to his lack of a costume.

Hunter looked surprised as Wally jogged to catch up with him. 

“You're insane, you know that?” Wally muttered under his breath.

“Why are you following me?” Hunter asked incredulously, probably not believing that Wally was prepared to walk into a possible bank robbery with him. To his credit, he didn't know that Wally had a regular habit of  _running_  into bank robberies and was more uncertain about letting a friend and an ally butt heads with each other.

“I think because I’m crazy,” he said. “But you're definitely crazier if you think I'm just going to stay back while a guy on  _crutches_  is willing to go looking for trouble. No. If you’re going, I’m going.”

Hunter gaped at him for a second before realizing there really was no arguing with Wally's logic when Hunter couldn't tell him that he wasn't scared of trouble because he had  _superpowers_. He  _almost_  looked willing to turn back at Wally's presence, balking only temporarily at the idea of a civilian tagging along.

But Hunter's sense of tenacious justice was stronger than his sense of civilian-preservation, and he turned away, walking faster on his crutches as if that would lose Wally. 

No such chance. 

He didn't know what Hunter planned to do if he found Cold or figured out what the Rogues were up to, and he didn't know what Hunter was capable of when he had a broken leg or how fast he could run on crutches, but he did know that if something were to go down between Hunter and the Rogues, he was the only one in the right position to stop it.

“Do you know where we need to go? How do you know this is the right way?” Wally asked as he followed Hunter down the street towards one of the high-rise buildings. He seemed to have a specific destination in mind, and Wally wasn't sure how Hunter could be so sure where Cold was. 

An expression of annoyance crossed Hunter's face. Wally wasn't sure if it was because he was easily keeping pace with Hunter or because he was still figuring out how he could lose Wally. He was pretty sure it was at least one of those two reasons. Or both.

“The Rogues are leaving this area completely untouched,” Hunter said as they walked into the building, which seemed to have been completely evacuated. Wally wasn't too surprised by the lack of people, considering the fact that supercriminal activity had become so common they actually had an evacuation drill for Rogues. He glanced at the board by the front desk, checking the offices on each floor. “I need you to go check out some floors for me.”

It really wasn't hard to guess what Hunter was trying to do when Wally knew he was a hero and everything. Send him off to some other floor and use that as an opportunity to disappear. By the time Wally came back, Hunter could be off anywhere else inside the huge building. It's what Wally would have done. Elevators were especially useful.

“You're kidding, right? I'm not here to catch Rogues, I'm here to keep an eye on you and make sure you don't get yourself killed,” Wally said. And maybe keep Hunter from killing Rogues. While his knee wasn't in the best condition, he doubted his injuries slowed him down as much as it seemed, especially when his powers weren't even speed based. Wally didn’t understand what Hunter’s powers were or how they worked, but he knew they weren’t like his own.

Hunter glared at Wally in frustration. “Look, I...”

Whatever irritated argument he might have had for Wally was cut off as his voice trailed. They quieted, hearing a distant scream somewhere inside the building. It sounded like the floor just above them.

The two of them stared at each other for a split second—which felt like several seconds with abilities like theirs. Every ounce of their beings insisted that they rush over to the person who needed help as quickly as possible, but both were intent on keeping their secret. 

“No elevators. Cold would hear it before we get out,” Hunter gritted out, looking like he was regretting Wally's presence already. Wally was too. At this point, all they were doing was holding each other back. Neither could rush to the woman's aid upstairs without revealing their ability to the other, and neither were willing to suggest they just leave with someone upstairs screaming for help. 

Feeling frustrated with impotence, Wally and Hunter headed quickly toward the emergency stairwell, where the two of them looked at the stairs with uncertainty. 

“Maybe you should stay behind,” Wally said, giving Hunter's leg a pointed stare. 

“Maybe  _you_  should stay,” he gritted in response as he held both crutches in one hand and put weight on his other leg. It didn't look comfortable, but he didn't seem to be in any pain either. “I can do stairs.”

Wally jogged up the stairs with Hunter close behind—no doubt cheating and using his powers just a  _little_. Maybe his leg didn't hurt him, but he shouldn't have been fast enough to keep up with Wally running upstairs. 

“One of us should stay behind, just in case,” Wally said, standing behind the door, twisting the handle and opening it just a crack. The screaming had already stopped, but it had definitely come from this floor. 

“I vote you. I'm not staying behind.”

“You have one leg.”

Hunter gritted his teeth and glared at his Wally, who decided to shut up. This was Hunter's show, after all. He really doubted Hunter was in much danger anyway. He just wasn't sure what Barry would think if he let Hunter walk right into a Rogue fight.

“Look,” Wally insisted. “How about I go first?”

He was quiet for a moment, watching Wally and mulling over their choices. He moved behind the door and peeked through the crack, seeing no one beyond the room. Wally had a pretty good idea what Hunter was thinking. Once Wally was out of the way, he could find the bad guy himself. Obviously, not knowing about Wally's abilities, he wasn't going to take into account the fact that Wally was just as fast as he was.

“You look for whoever needs help, stay out of sight, and come  _straight back_ ,” Hunter finally said. “Understood?”

“Got it,” Wally nodded, tilting his head to catch a glimpse of the room. 

“If you see Cold,  _don't_  run, okay? You get down on the ground and put your hands behind your head. You're not a cop, and you're not going to cause any trouble. He probably won't kill you.”

“Comforting,” he quipped in response. 

“I'm serious. Get in, get out. No heroics.”

“Yes,  _dear_ ,” Wally scoffed. “We need to hurry. People could be hurt.”

“And you could be one of them,” Hunter muttered under his breath, casting one last through the door before opening it wide enough for Wally to go through. “Go and be careful.”

Hunter was probably going to make a move as soon as Wally left. He wondered if he could make it to Cold before Wally did. The thought of being within fifty feet of Hunter and Captain Cold at the same time left him feeling unsettled.

Well, Wally thought to himself determinedly as he strode past several desks in silence, he just needed to follow the sounds of muffled screams. It was a little unnerving and left him feeling uneasy.

He crept by office after office, wondering just what was in this building that made it worth stealing from. He didn't see anything worth stealing in the offices. A computer or two were worth maybe five hundred each on average, but Wally distinctly remembered the derision he was met with when he had suggested taking one as loot at one point in his career. Too heavy to run easily with, and it just wasn't worth it.

The quiet sobs grew louder as Wally zeroed in on the sound, carefully and briefly peeking through every door he passed. He checked over his shoulder each time to make sure Hunter wasn't anywhere near, watching before sprinting forward to the next room. Skim, run, search for the victim. He followed the pattern until he found the woman whose crying had drawn him to the office. 

She wasn't the only one, Wally realized as he found her with over a dozens and dozens of other men and women who most likely worked here during the day. They were huddled at the center of the office, surrounded by a wall of smooth glass that seemed to be maybe an inch thick on all sides. He could barely hear them through the wall, mostly in part due to the small breathable airholes Cold had 'courteously' left when he had trapped them all in what was essentially a giant, hollowed out ice cube. 

A woman banged futilely on the glass, barely heard over the sound of Wally's own breathing, let alone her faint shrieks as she demanded to be released from the ice prison. It was hard to see through the opaque white, with features blurred, but she had definitely spotted the blur of color on the other side as another person, and her shouts increased slightly in volume as she demanded to be let out. 

“ _Hold on, hold on_!” Wally hissed through one of the cracks in the ice, keeping his voice low. “I'm not Cold, I'm not. I'm going to help, just let me uh... I'll...” His voice trailed off as he realized he didn't know  _what_  to do. 

“What?” an unfortunately familiar voice growled from behind him. Wally slowly turned around, looking over his shoulder to see a face he knew too well, a figure wearing a blue parka that was only just beginning to come into season. “What are you going to do, kid?”

His eyes were hidden behind shaded glasses, and Wally couldn't find any signs of recognizing his face. His identity as the Kid, a fellow criminal and colleague, seemed safe so far. Seeing as he had an ice gun leveled at his face, Wally wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

Instead, he smiled a little uncertainly. 

“...Captain Cold. I am... not surprised, actually.”

“I asked you a question,” Cold said, no sign of acknowledgment or recognition in his voice. “ _What_  did you think you were going to do?”

“Seeing as you're the one with the gun, I think what you want me to do is a little more important,” Wally said, forcing a steady tone. And with that effort, the words began to slide more easily out of his mouth. Seeing Captain Cold, he almost couldn't help reacting a little like the Kid would. It seemed to be a sort of conditioned reflex, the way he fell back to being the relaxed Kid when he saw the Rogues, despite being  _Wally_  right now. He could attribute it to his time with the Rogues that he was no longer as concerned as he used to be that he felt most confident in the company of Rogues. He had grown adjusted to their company, and when he was with them, he was in his element.

Or maybe he was just subconsciously hoping that Cold would find him familiar and  _not_  shoot him.

Even confronted by Cold, Wally wasn't  _entirely_  worried just yet. What worried him was not knowing how long he had until Hunter inevitably came up and found the him and the Rogue. Despite his injuries, Hunter could still access his powers, which left Wally unsure as to whether Hunter would be willing to risk a fight or not. The fact that he didn't help Red Arrow and Aquarius in their fight against Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave didn't mean much, since he couldn't tell if it was because he couldn't contribute to their skirmish or if he was just more interested in catching Captain Cold.

And even if Hunter's injuries hampered his fighting skills, Wally had his reasons to doubt that it would stop him from picking a fight anyway. Hunter was intelligent, Wally knew that, but sometimes he just didn't seem to use his head.

“No heroics,” Cold ordered.

“Oh believe me, I'm no hero,” Wally said. “Not when it's going to get me shot.”

He wasn't too scared of the cold gun. He could perhaps narrowly dodge a shot or two from Captain Cold without raising any suspicions as to his secret identity, and even so, Cold had told him that being frozen head to toe by his gun was surprisingly not fatal. Uncomfortable, definitely, but not fatal. Rocket and Superboy were proof of that. But it was what he could do while you were frozen that was the dangerous part, Cold had warned him. Wally knew why. There was a little comfort in the fact that Cold didn't kill civilians if he didn't have to.

Not on purpose, anyway. 

No, there was no reason to dodge ice beams or risk getting knocked over as a harmless but vulnerable human ice sculpture if he just avoided giving the Rogue leader a reason to shoot him. Wally recalled Hunter's advice and raised his hands to the back of his head. “Do I have to get on my knees? I don't want to get on my knees. Too many jokes,” he said. 

Cold didn't look at all concerned by Wally's presence, even taking a moment to glance outside of the window to catch a glimpse of the fight still taking place outside. There wasn't much that could be seen of the fight itself from their angle, but both Cold and Wally caught side of a white blur that was probably one of Digger's boomerangs. It was then that Wally realized Cold wasn't just using them as a distraction. He was avoiding the fight, waiting it out for Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave to come up here. 

Cold never would've chosen to meet at a place like this on purpose. The building made for poor cover, had too many exits and entrances to control, and had people in it when he had arrived. Hunter had pointed it out at one point that the Rogues preferred environments easier to control. Only one place for Flash or Zoom to come in, easier than being stuck trying to keep an eye on multiple openings for the Flash to arrive in.

Their loot was probably here too. Captain Cold wouldn't duck out of a fight just because he didn't think he could handle it. He'd been carrying whatever it was he had taken, and he had brought it here into the building to avoid the risk of losing it to the heroes. 

“ _So,_ ” Wally said, catching Cold's attention once again, because it would do little good for Cold to pay attention to the events unfolding outside. Not when the enemy was inside the building. The last thing Wally wanted was to be stuck in a building with Hunter and a Rogue, but if he was going to be stuck in that kind of situation anyway, he'd rather have control over it, maybe steer them away from each other if possible. “...Stealing office supplies, huh? You know, staplers don't sell much on the black market.”

Wally glanced around. It hadn't been that hard to find out where the hostages had been taken, and considering the fact that Hunter's injuries did little to slow him down when he accessed his powers, it was taking an oddly long time to him to arrive. Not that Wally was eager for him to come or anything, since he was here trying to keep Cold and Hunter from doing something reckless and trying to kill each other, but the fact that Hunter still hadn't arrived was a bit strange. 

Immediately suspicious of Wally's wandering eyes, Cold followed suit and glanced around. “You come here with a friend?” he growled. 

“I was looking for him,” Wally said easily, somewhere in the back of his mind realizing that he was getting pretty good at this lying thing. The fact that it wasn’t a complete lie helped. “I...” Wally stopped talking, cut off by the the sudden activation of the sprinklers. “...Heat Wave?”

Cold didn't answer him, instead turning and grumbling something about Digger letting psychotic pyromaniacs get out of hand. He turned around to leave but paused before casting a glare over his shoulder that would've left anyone else frozen, heh, in place. “Don't move,” he warned. 

“What?”

But Wally did move, leaping to the side as an ice beam shot past him. He winced, grazed by the beam of light, and brushed the layer of ice off his shoulder. Cold had been aiming for his  _face_. 

He was serious.


	13. Chapter 13

“ _What the heck was that for?_ ” Wally yelped as the Kid's flippant attitude was replaced by his more serious one, the kind of personality reserved for heists rather than casual bar room conversations. 

“You're  _going_  to stay out of the way,” Cold told him, without a hint of indecision. “And the more you move, the more likely you are to break something if you fall, so  _stand still_.”

Yeah, right, as if he was just going to stand there and let Cold freeze him. He knew the gun had a good number of modes that weren't fatal to people, but he was also pretty sure that they were all just as unpleasant as being frozen alive tended to be. 

The sprinkler system made things more complicated for both of them. The direction and range of Cold's guns sporadic at best, and as the beams traveled through the air, frozen droplets of water hit the floor in streams, some of them shattering into even tinier pieces as they struck the floor and others bouncing like tiny beads.

As he lurched around in the soaked office, haphazardly dodging ice beams, Wally wondered if Cold was as glad as he was that nobody else other than the hostages was here to witness this embarrassing display of a fight. Then again, he probably couldn’t even count the hostages as being among them, since he doubted they could see much through the tinted white ice. It was just him and Cold.

Despite stumbling around with his arms flailing wildly, it wasn't that hard to duck out of the way of beams of ice when the beams were just slow enough for him to be able to dodge at the last minute if he tapped into his speed just a little bit. 

Which was... a problem, Wally realized as Cold's frustrated scowl became one considerably more calculating. Cold was used to fighting with people like the Flash and Zoom, and being just a little faster than the average human wasn't going to cut it for long if he started taking Wally as a serious threat. Any moment now, Cold would notice something was off. That something about Wally’s movements was familiar. That he moved like a speedster.

Wally sighed and closed his eyes, resigning himself to being frozen in a solid block of ice for the next few hours or so. Better to control when it happened than risk being frozen in mid-movement and shattering something. 

But Cold missed. He missed completely, and Wally opened his eyes to see the beam hitting a far-off corner of the room. He watched Hunter, striding past Cold as quickly as he could after knocking the man's arm and aim askew. He made a beeline towards Wally, one crutch missing and giving Cold only a cursory glance over his shoulder. Wally stood as still as much as possible, relaxing his body and his speed. He kept his eyes trained on the wall and limited his movements. It would be bad if Hunter noticed Wally's speed was noticeably higher than it should’ve been.

Silently, he grabbed Wally's arm, pulling him along as quickly as he could with one hand. Wally went with the movement, trying to avoid moving along with him too quickly, a quiet nervousness taking over. It was strange, being pulled along like this, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to move when someone was dragging him along at superspeed. In the end, either Wally had imitated the rag-doll like movement well enough to pass for an ordinary citizen, or Hunter was too distracted by his mission to get the two of them out of the way as quickly as possible. Either way, Wally’s awareness went unnoticed.

Hunter pulled Wally across the rest of the room and pushed him roughly inside one of the offices before leaving as quickly as he had come. 

As he sat on the floor, Wally actually didn't have enough time to be discomfited by the fact that Hunter was, in fact, almost as fast as Wally. He was hobbling around on one leg and a crush, and he was  _still_  ridiculously fast. A loud crack filled the air, followed by a series of smaller cracks, and all of a sudden Wally heard a crash. 

He scrambled forward and peeked his head out of the door to see a giant hole where the ground should've been. He couldn't see Cold from the angle, but the captives had fallen out of the hole in the ground to the first floor and landed on a pile of thick, gooey red substance that covered the ground to cushion their fall. 

High density polyurethane foam, Wally realized. Red Arrow was here, then. Hunter had probably taken a moment to call the superheroes over for backup once Wally had left. 

The sprinkler system was probably broken by now, the water no longer falling into his eyes. 

Wally peered down over the edge to see the commotion taking place below. Hunter had already made it downstairs, using his crutches to to help pull people out of the goo that covered the ground, and a little further ahead, Aquarius defended himself from Heat Wave’s burning hot flames with a thick shield. The sprinkler system wasn't completely broken, Wally realized. Just... rerouted. Aquarius was controlling the water, putting out as many fires in the room as he could without leaving himself vulnerable to Heat Wave’s dangerous flamethrowers. Leaning forward a little more, he could see Digger facing off against Red Arrow. 

Red Arrow against Captain Boomerang, Heat Wave against Aquarius. They were almost the perfect match for each other, and it seemed as if the fight would have been a long stand off, but Hunter had called them, had asked for them to deal with Cold and, with Hunter mostly injured and unable to fight efficiently, it was three-against-two, and despite the fact that it was his team that was outnumbering them, something about the the advantage the Rogues had over them put Wally at unease.

Something was going to happen. 

And he knew exactly what that something was the moment Cold stepped in, when he froze Red Arrow's polyurethane foam, leaving the people inside and everyone touching it frozen in the substance. 

Hunter included. 

“Put your weapons down and kick them away or the next shot's going to be fatal,” Cold said.

No way, Wally thought. There was no way Cold would do something like that. He didn't kill civilians. Every precaution the Rogues took, they took to avoid rocking the boat. Killing a dozen of helpless civilians was going to rock the boat, and it was going to leave every law enforcement officer and hero in the area on their tails. It had to be a bluff. 

It  _was_  a bluff. Wally could feel it in his gut. Or maybe that was just denial. 

Hunter's good leg was trapped in the frozen substance, and in spite of his helplessness, he had just a look of frustration and displeasure and hatred, all directed towards Cold. The anger multiplied as, after a beat of silence, both Aquarius and Red Arrow relinquished their weapons.

Hunter wasn't afraid at all, glaring at Cold with a murderous expression. There was no sign of fear on his face. 

Cold stared right back at Hunter, and though his sunglasses rendered his face mostly unreadable, there was a sense of stillness as the Rogue evaluated the situation. He watched Hunter, was looking at him too intently to be normal, as if he was seeing something for the first time. 

Seeing Zoom.

Wally knew the moment Cold's gaze turned to the leg cast that the pieces were coming together, and he had to move now because Wally really had no idea what the Rogues would do if they found out who Hunter was. 

Scratch that, he was pretty sure it would get nasty.

Briefly taking a moment to run his hands through his hair, pushing wet strands out of his face, Wally backed away from the edge of the collapsed floor, his back against the wall, and then took a running leap towards the edge. 

The landing was a little unpleasant, but it wasn't nearly as bad as landing on the tile. 

' _Sorry, Digger,_ ' Wally thought unapologetically as he crawled off of Captain Boomerang, who had broken his fall and was now staring up at Wally with a dazed, clobbered expression. 

The moment Wally landed, Red Arrow pulled an arrow out of his quiver and, foregoing the bow, jabbed the blunt tip into Heat Wave's side, sending Mick collapsing to the ground with a series of jerks and twitches as his body was covered in thin sparks. Some sort of taser arrow. Wally hid a wince for his fallen, twitching comrade. That probably hurt.

Cold didn't waste any time either. Aquarius had lunged forward, but Cold's draw was faster, leaving Aquarius and Red Arrow's weapons embedded in ice. He froze the entire floor along with them.

“Got anything else up your sleeve?” Cold said. “Should pull it out now, doesn't look like your last ace worked.”

Cold was the last Rogue left standing, but he was also the only person left in the building who was armed. Everyone's attention was focused on him, waiting for what would happen next. Cold glanced at a clock on the wall. Waiting for something? Then he looked over his shoulder at Hunter.

Was Cold weighing the pros and cons of killing an unarmed hero, dressed down in his civvies? The consequences of killing a hostage would be harsh, but if Cold _had_  guessed Zoom's identity, the backlash would be lower than killing a hero outright. It was his chance to get rid of Zoom with minimal risk and solve a bunch of future problems. But killing Zoom could trigger an attack from Red Arrow and Aquarius. Would he consider it worth the risk? 

The moment the gun even  _shifted_  in Cold's hands, Wally moved, and with everyone's attention focused on Cold, he moved  _fast_. The floor he stood on was chilled, but too far to have been affected by the spray of ice that covered the floor closer to the action. It was seven steps to the fight, and in that time Wally had gained enough speed to skid across the floor. He slid on his heels, falling back on his rear to keep his weight low to the ground and keep himself from toppling over unpredictably.

His feet hit Heat Wave, stopping him from moving any further, and by the time Cold had pulled the trigger on Hunter, Wally had grabbed Heat Wave's flamethrower, aimed, and fired.

Cold ducked to the side instinctively, caught off guard as a narrow strip of fire shot past him to interrupt the blast of ice that had been aimed at Hunter. The beam of light from his Cold gun and Heat Wave’s flames crossed and released a loud, concussive blast. 

“Wally!” Hunter shouted in surprise, realizing just how close Wally was getting to danger—the first sign of fear he had shown all day. Figures. It took his mentor's nephew running headlong into danger to save his ass to break the haughty attitude. The complete lack of concern for  _himself_  was a little disconcerting, but the ridiculous amount of selflessness was something of a trademark when it came to superheroes anyway. “Get back!”

The ice gun was trained back on Wally again, and to be fair, Wally had the flamethrower pointed at Cold. 

“I thought I said no heroics,” Cold said to him. “It's going to get you into trouble.”

“I figure I'm fast enough to just run away when things get too hot,” Wally said. What to say, what to do... He never got to decide and felt the flamethrower gun shift in his hands. He looked down and found Heat Wave staring right back up at him, eyes hollow and wide open, and Wally would have been worried that Mick was  _dead_  if he hadn’t blinked. Not dead, just staring at him creepily then.

He felt the gun shift again. The fuel line still attached to Heat Wave, who was preparing to move, and Wally would have reacted quickly enough to hit him, to keep Heat Wave from getting back up, but something hard struck him in the head and left a streak of pain across his brow. 

Wally's head was ringing and the world spinning and he belatedly realized he had been knocked over onto his back. Somewhere in his confusion he saw a flash of white streak across the air. 

Captain Boomerang. Those things really hurt. In that instant, Heat Wave reversed their positions so that he was the one sitting over Wally, and he had his gun pressed into Wally's neck. It took a moment for Wally to get his senses back together enough to notice the wild look in Heat Wave’s eyes. The uncanny excitement brought a chill down his spine. 

“Nice try, kid,” Captain Cold said. 

Kid. His thoughts still out of focus, he couldn't help responding. “Guess I ain't _that_  good, huh, Cold?” he said blearily, an echo of an old conversation. 

Cold might've found Wally familiar before, but there was a definite spark of recognition in his eyes. Maybe he recognized the mocking words from whenever Cold dismissed the Kid's skills. Maybe he suddenly recalled Wally's uncanny agility. Maybe it was the way Wally's hair had been wetted and slicked back by the sprinkler system earlier or the way the blood above his brow leaked over his eye, obscuring his features with a familiar color in a familiar way. Like a mask.

His eyes flickered to the other side of the building where Boomerang stood, calculating the distance between where Wally had landed on Digger to where he was now, and how  _fast_  he would've had to have been to cross the room in seconds.

Cold glanced at the clock again. 

' _What was he waiting for?_ ' Wally wondered.

“We don't got time for this,” Cold growled. “Get up, Mick.”

“Hold on, Len...” he said, tucking the flamethrower gun under Wally's chin. “I wanna try something first.”

Wally was frozen as he listened to them speak, the gravity of the situation only now just bearing down on him with its full weight. Heat Wave's flamethrowers were custom made to fight the Flash and the floor was coated in ice. Wally’s mind worked frantically, trying to figure out whether, if he managed to get away, he’d be able to outrun the flames in this position. 

“...Let 'em go,” Cold said in a warning tone, sounding like he was running short on patience. 

“Just a minute, Len.”

The muzzle was warm, but Wally felt himself shiver.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some drama.

When Hunter delivered the news, Barry took it better than he expected. He fixed Hunter with a deliberately calm look, told him to go home and wash up, and left to go look for Wally himself. Hunter was actually a little surprised with Barry’s composure. Despite the disappointment and reprimand building up in his mentor’s eyes, Barry had maintained a calm, if restrained, tone and dismissed him without a single rebuke.

He probably decided he didn’t need to. Hunter knew exactly what he did wrong.

Regardless, the fact that Barry hadn’t done a thing only made Hunter feel worse. No raised voices or hands. He never did with Hunter, not even with his worst fuck-ups. Hunter knew he wouldn’t have had the same patience for himself if he’d been in Barry’s place. Of course, Barry didn’t really have time to waste on lecturing Hunter. Not when his nephew was missing.

Getting home was a blur and a feat that Hunter hadn’t been sure how he accomplished with one leg broken and the other numb. His entire body shook, chilled when his leg had been encased in ice, but he’d fought Cold enough times as Zoom to know when he needed to be treated for hypothermia. He didn’t need a hospital. He needed to go home.

It took a hot bath for it all to hit him.

Hunter sat on the edge of the tub, pants legs rolled up and his feet immersed in the water, waiting for the rest of him to warm up when he thought about how hot it must’ve been. It hadn’t been a direct hit. Wally had somehow managed to scramble away, get out of point-blank range. In his panic, he actually put a surprising amount of distance between himself and Heat Wave, but...

He remembered Wally flailing as his clothes caught aflame, a flash of light, and his scream being cut off as they disappeared.

Hunter stopped and looked down at his feet. The occasional sound of traffic had been slowed down to one long, drawn out hum, and the water around his feet had become cool and unmoving with the small ripples around his calves frozen in place. The world stilled around him.

Normally, he took comfort in the solitude his powers provided him, but today, the feeling of being alone left Hunter feeling nauseous. Wally was supposed to be here, with him in his apartment, messing with his belongings and leaving them out of place, watching TV with the volume turned up too loud, or just listening to Hunter read his lectures as they went over his work.

Instead, Hunter was stuck by himself, lost in his own head, because he’d been dumb enough to let Wally walk into an area he hadn’t cleared. He should’ve tried to convince Wally it was a bad idea to go in the first place. He shouldn’t have even suggested going in the first place.

Uncomfortable with the silence and with his mind whirling at a speed almost too fast for himself to register, he closed his eyes and held his wristwatch up to his ear. It was a cheap thing, bought more out of necessity than an actual need to tell the time. The buzzing sounds became more distinct, one of them separating to become a slow, drawn out tick. He sat and he listened until the ticks became something considerably more like the sound of a second hand.

The water heated back up as the world began to run normally again, but he still had the shakes. Hunter gave up on trying to get rid of them, sighing and turning off the running water. It wasn’t the cold. He started patting his legs dry with a towel. By the time he pulled his pants legs back down from his knees to his ankles, only a little damp, his cell phone, left by the sink, lit up.

He immediately snatched the phone up before it even completed the first ring.

“Barry?”

“Hunter.” His mentor's voice was serious. Family was one of the only things, outside of Flash business, that could give him that kind of tone, and it was Hunter who put him in that mood.

His voice cracked a little as he spoke. “Did you find—?”

“No. I'm about to go back out to look. ...I just gave Mary the news.”

Wally's mom. Right. Hunter paused for a moment, finding it a little difficult to speak, but Barry wasn't as patient for a response as he usually was. He wasn't surprised.

“What did she say?”

“She wants to know why this happened,” Barry said. “And I’d like to hear more too.”

Hunter couldn’t speak for a moment. He had nothing. There was no point in making excuses. “Red Arrow and Aquarius were on the streets fighting Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave. Maybe they didn’t notice Captain Cold or maybe he managed to duck out in the fight and they lost him, but he was going to get away. I went to look around, and Wally followed after me. I let him. I thought I’d just send him off in the wrong direction and lose him once I got there. But he wasn’t leaving me alone. Except he suggested that he go ahead to look for Cold himself...”

“ _Hunter_...”

“I shouldn’t have, I know,” he said a little desperately.

“ _You should've called._ ” The accusation in Barry's voice was clear, and Hunter felt like he was a kid again and Flash was reprimanding him for running headlong into Cadmus, but he knows this was so, so much worse.

“I didn't... I didn't think about it. You weren't there,” Hunter said, though he knew the excuse wouldn't hold. He already told Flash that after he and Wally split up, he had called Kaldur and Roy, alerting them that Cold was in the building and he and his friend were inside the building with him. Barry had been one brief phone call and ten seconds away, and it hadn't even occurred to Hunter to call him at the time. His own mentor.

“Well, what about Wally, did you think about him?” Barry continued. “You dragged my nephew into danger. He doesn't exactly have any kind of power, Hunter. No training at all!”

“I didn't—” Hunter tried to say uselessly, knowing he really had no excuse for what he did. Nothing he hadn't ever used before, anyway.

“I  _know_  you didn't think! You never stop to think!” he said, his throat sounding hoarse. Probably had the same throat clenching problem Hunter had, except Barry was more successful in forcing his words out. “We have to be careful with other people in our line of work. Did you forget about Ashley’s father?”

Hunter felt his breath catch in his chest at the memory, the single worst thing he’d ever done. Barry's end of the line went quiet as well, probably wondering if he had gone too far by bringing the incident up, but Barry was nowhere near as forgiving as he usually was. He may have felt he’d overstepped his bounds, but he couldn’t bring himself to apologize either.

“You've been Zoom for five years. Some might say you're more than ready for the Justice League. But Hunter, this is the second time you've proven us wrong. The same mistake as last time.”

“But  _Wally_  didn't have to  _follow_  me,” Hunter said defensively. The words had been pure reflex, and Hunter knew the moment the words escaped his lips that that was the wrong thing to say.

His prediction proved true as Barry positively  _exploded_  through the phone receiver. “ _Of course he did_!” Barry shouted. “Of  _course_  he followed you. He  _likes_  you! Apparently enough to run into danger and jump Captain Boomerang and hijack Heat Wave's gun if you need him to!”

“...I know,” he finally said in response. He never considered it before, but with as few friends as Wally bothered to keep, it only made sense that he'd latch on to those closest to him and Hunter had, apparently, ranked highest on that list.

“I just finished telling Mary that her son is missing,” Barry told him wearily. “I had to tell her why he decided to just run into a building where a Rogue was hiding out. I had to tell her why, when given the opportunity, he didn't run like any sensible person would've done.”

A pause.

“I'm going back out to look for him,” he finally said.

“I'll go too,” Hunter said quickly, heading toward his bedroom to grab his Zoom costume, which hadn't been worn since his injury.

“No. You've done enough,” Barry said. There was another pause as Barry presumably attempted to get a hold of himself. To calm down because even if Hunter had made a mistake, it hadn't been on purpose. Already on the path of forgiving him, as slow as it may end up being. Barry was too much of a saint sometimes. People weren't supposed to be forgiven for murder. It wasn't right. “If you want to do something, get your leg checked out.”

“But—”

“The point of taking you off the team roster and going on leave was to give you time to recover. Don’t tell me you didn’t come out at least a little banged up. You’re always running around all over the place, you were in the bus when it crashed, and you picked a fight with the Rogues. You haven’t been playing it safe, Hunter.”

“I’ll just look, I won’t start anything,” he insisted.

“No, listen to me. Stay away from the Rogues, and stay off the streets. We can't have Zoom running around looking for Wally wearing a leg brace after they saw you,” Barry said, his voice lacking the hot venom that had been there before. Now he just sounded tired. Determined, but tired.

And the last thing Hunter wanted to do was bother him with the possibility that Cold might already know who he was now. That could be dealt with later. Cold knew his face, but nothing else.

“Okay,” he finally said, pushing down the welling frustration.

“And you need to get a hold of yourself. You can't let your powers run you like that. You know how it makes you act.”

Destructive. Reckless. Stupid. “Okay.”

“And Hunter...” Barry began slowly. He spoke with a slow sort of caution that told Hunter that, whatever Barry had to say to him, it wasn't going to be pleasant. Hunter braced himself for what he had coming. “You’re an adult and I don't have any authority over you, but I'm hoping you will understand my reasons for  _asking_...”

His mentor paused, faltering as he struggled to find the right words, before continuing.

“We're  _going_  to get Wally back,” he said with an air of finality in his tone. “But today, you were reckless and placed the Rogues above the safety of your own friend. I spoke to his mother. Didn't tell her the whole story, but she brought up a point that I agreed with. This isn't going to happen again.”

Hunter nodded uselessly over the phone and opened his mouth to speak, but Barry wasn't waiting for a response.

“...Because until you get your priorities straight, I think it might be a good idea if you and Wally kept your distance for just a little while.”

Oh.

It took a minute for the anxious request to really register. His lungs felt as if they'd been emptied. Not for a lack of breath, but it felt like his chest was collapsing in on itself a little bit. But it was okay. He was really overreacting. The day's guilt, dread, and overall stress certainly didn't help. Wally was just a friend, and not one he'd had for an incredibly long time anyway.

Just a friend.

He mentally turned over those three words in his head.. The ‘just’ part didn't sound right. It felt so demeaning and made Wally sound so small and insignificant, despite how he was absolutely not. Hunter didn’t waste time with insignificant people. Wally  _had_  to be something more than  _just a friend_.

He cut his thoughts off there because the more Wally was to him, the more Hunter was going to miss Wally. Whatever he was.

“Hunter?”

Barry's voice cut his thought process off there, sounding a little concerned in spite of all the trouble Hunter had caused. For a moment, Hunter was tempted to protest the request. After years of working by each other's sides, he could read his mentor like a book, and Barry lacked conviction. If he argued hard enough, Barry would take it back and he wouldn't have to lose a friend.

But, yeah, he  _had_  worked with Barry for years, and just because he had the privilege of working with the Flash and being treated like a part of his own family didn’t mean it was right to simply abuse it.

He thought about Wally, leaping into the fight like a terrible  _idiot_  and then getting overturned by Heat Wave and Captain Boomerang and then frantically beginning to struggle as the hem of his shirt caught on fire and then there was the start of a scream—

“...Okay,” Hunter finally said, and if his voice sounded oddly defeated, angry, or disappointed, Barry didn't comment on it. “I'll leave him alone.”


	15. Chapter 15

Most drugs had a profound effect on Hunter’s sense of time. The first time he was injured on the job, it made finding the right pain medication a chore to find because when his grasp on time faltered, it, of course, affected his abilities, as he and Barry found out. Weed was also off-limits. The team went after Poison Ivy once and, as many missions often went, it ended with a fair amount of flames and explosions. The four hour high from her burning greenhouse managed to stretch into weeks of living in a frozen world where the only people who existed in it were himself and Barry. That unpleasant experience had been rivaled only by the hell he endured the first few days after he’d gotten his powers.

He was pretty sure alcohol was no different and treated it with the same leery suspicion he gave other drugs. His abilities were volatile enough as they were.

Hunter turned over the bottle again, checking the labels. Ashley had bought it for him for his twenty-first birthday, under the assumption that he would actually drink it. He mostly humored her with a word of thanks and then, after that, had left the whiskey to sit in the cupboard.

Eventually, Hunter set it down. There was no point trying to drink now. Or ever. It wouldn’t make his problems go away. But after a moment, he picked it up again, tempted just to try, to see why being drunk was so much more appealing than real life. He put it back down. And then, for what may’ve been the eighth time, he picked the bottle back up...

“If you're going to drink for the first time, it shouldn't be like this.”

...and hurled it at his unwelcome guest.

Hunter couldn't tell if it was fortunate or not that Roy had the reflexes to duck under the bottle as it sailed through the air and landed by the table with an admittedly satisfying crash.

“Now  _that_  would probably be more therapeutic,” Roy told him, straightening back up. “Though I wouldn't suggest breaking things in your own place.”

“Been taking lessons from Rob?” Hunter asked dully. His arrival had been so quiet, he had attributed the few sounds Roy had made to that of his neighbors.

“He's not the only one who knows how to be stealthy,” Roy asked, though they both knew nobody was better at stealth than Robin. Well, maybe Batman, but no one could really compete with Batman.

“What do you want?” Hunter asked, walking past Roy and into the kitchen to grab rags and a dust pan to clean up the mess he made. He could have slowed time, caught the bottle before it hit the ground, but Flash had told him before. No powers. He couldn’t keep using it, not while he was still using pain medication, and not when his sense of judgment was being impaired to the point that he walked a civilian into an active fight with dangerous criminals.

Plus, Roy had been right. The sound of breaking glass had been cathartic.

“I saw a blur of red going all over town,” he said, not answering his question. “Kaldur's looking for your friend too.”

Hunter wanted to ask Roy what on earth Kaldur could do to help find Wally, but he remembered the speed Atlanteans were capable of swimming at. He pressed his mouth shut as he swept up broken glass into the dustpan and resolutely didn't think about the river that ran around the edge of the city.

“I'm not exactly well-equipped for search parties, so I figured I'd stop by and check up on you,” Roy finished.

Hunter paused, his ears registering what he had just heard, and then wishing he hadn't thrown the whiskey. Roy, offering emotional support. Hunter knew then that he had hit an all-time low.

Maybe a second low, actually. This was tied with the incident with Lyle Corley, due mostly to the fact that, boiled down, the incidents had been so similar. Except Roy hadn't been fit to visit last time, and Kaldur had been too busy dealing with Roy's crisis to help with his.

“You... want to talk about it?” Roy finally asked after a period of awkward silence. The irony of Roy's presence probably wasn't lost on him. He was probably well aware that he was possibly the least equipped person for the task of giving Hunter reassurance. And the last person Hunter wanted.

“Does Kaldur know you're here?” Hunter asked suddenly.

“He suggested it, actually,” he admitted.

It made some sense, then, why Roy was so here when he was so obviously uncomfortable and could be out looking for Rogues. For Wally, Hunter corrected, because his prioritizing had been the cause of this mess in the first place. At the same time, it  _didn't_  make sense, because it meant Kaldur apparently trusted Roy's ham-handed people skills to deal with Hunter, and Kaldur  _knew_  about their thin tolerance for each other. Roy might've been socially well-adjusted, but he lacked a certain amount of finesse when it came to sensitive subjects, and while Hunter would never describe himself as sensitive, he knew very well that he was in a touchy, volatile mood.

“I don't suppose you want a drink?” he asked Roy, more out of the need to fill the silence rather than actual manners.

“Not if you're going to throw it at me,” came the wry response. This, Hunter could talk about. He didn't want to talk about 'it'. He didn't even want to think about it. He could use some mind-numbing banter. But just as Hunter decided he could latch onto an unrelated topic, Roy steered the conversation back to 'it'. In fact, he didn't just steer to it, he drove straight into the subject and stabbed at it with his arrow. “So I've never actually seen the Flash this angry. Never seen him angry at all, actually.”

“That was his nephew who got taken. I pretty much walked him to the Rogues,” Hunter told him. Saying it out loud made him feel oddly calm. The sense of dread in his chest seemed to drown out any panic he might've had. “I made him come with me. Practically forced him to. He thought he was watching out for me because of my leg, and he didn't want to look like a coward backing out either. I knew letting him follow me was a bad idea, but all I could think about was that maybe, just maybe, we'd finally catch Captain Cold.”

Roy bought himself time to think as he situated himself on Hunter's couch, not saying anything as he settled into his seat as if to make himself comfortable. A few moments later, he apparently realized there was no way to spin the story to make it sound any better, and instead of futilely trying to show Hunter another side to the story, Roy wisely changed the angle of the conversation. “You couldn't have known he'd be willing to go after the Rogues, though. Attack them, threaten Cold for you.”

“I should've. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done it,” Hunter said, drawing up a chair and sitting within conversational distance of him. He might be a little distraught and they might be on the way to making up, but in his opinion, they just weren't at the couch-sharing stage just yet. Not to mention, that was  _Wally's_ spot. “Not as me, though. I was Zoom. There was a time at Central Mall. I was fighting the Mirror Master. He helped me out. I should've known. He's just like that.”

“Brave?”

“Unpredictable.”

“Then, like I said, you couldn’t have known he’d do that,” Roy said, and after a moment of silence. “He seems like a good guy.”

“He's great,” he said automatically, banishing the uncomfortable thought as far from the forefront of his mind as he could. “He's great and kind of weird because he'll say and do all sorts of crazy stupid things without being actually crazy  _or_  stupid.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Like,” Hunter paused, struggling to find the right words and hand motions to describe who Wally  _was_. “Like, he'll see all the possibilities, know all the odds, and despite overwhelming odds, he'll go ahead and do it anyway. I guess that just makes him incredibly smart and dumb at the same time.”

“I guess he's kind of like us then,” Roy joked.

“Fat chance,” Hunter snorted. 

Roy turned his head to the coffee table at the sudden sound of a short ringtone that Hunter pointedly ignored. “Aren't you going to answer that?” he said, grabbing Hunter's cell phone, which was getting more action in one day than it generally got in a week. “It could be about Wally.”

“The Flash found Wally, he’d call,” Hunter said. “Well... probably.”

Seeing as Barry was angry with him and Hunter wasn’t supposed to see Wally after this, Barry might actually only bother with a text. Hunter had to admit, he was just making excuses to himself. He didn’t feel up to checking his phone. The sight of all the supportive messages from his friends made him feel nauseous with guilt and fear.

But with Roy watching him with a critical eye, Hunter felt a sort of growing defiance. As much as he said today, he had to remind himself that they weren’t friends. Not after Roy’s mistake cost the team a leader and almost cost Hunter a team. Reminded of this fact, Hunter steeled himself, getting up to take his phone and check the messages. They ranged from offers to help from Garth to an either optimistic or cryptic  _Trust me, he’ll be fine_  from Robin.

“Seems like they’re all ready to come to Wally’s rescue for you,” Roy said. He looked over Hunter’s shoulder to see what he was typing.

“I’m telling them not to come,” Hunter said dully. “A team of heroes coming over to look into his disappearance would look suspicious. There were enough questions that time they helped with East Grey.”

Roy looked unimpressed by Hunter's priorities. “Someone’s been kidnapped, and you're concerned about someone getting  _suspicious_?” he said incredulously. “Your friend  _needs_  you. You should be out there looking for him!”

“I  _want_  to be out there looking for him, but it’s not that simple,” he said, growing defensive at Roy’s tone. The two of them were always quick to anger, but it was once uncommon that their personalities found themselves turning against each other.

“It  _is_  that simple,” Roy said. “You get up, you look for Wally. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Oh, I’m not taking advice about right and wrong from you,” Hunter scoffed. “Not when Kaldur had to drop out of the team and end his career—”

“His career is  _fine_ —”

“— _and end his career_ ,” Hunter repeated more loudly, “because you didn’t do the right thing. You did what you wanted, to hell with the consequences, and he had to bail you out and babysit you when it backfired. He had to quit the team because of you.”

Roy shoved him back, pinning him against the wall and holding up a finger in his face.

“Okay, stop. Stop right there,” Roy said firmly, bringing his hand back up after Hunter irritably tried to swat it out of his face. “You’re not mad that Kaldur chose me over the team, you’re mad that he chose me over you. Well, news flash, Hunter, I might’ve caused a lot of trouble, but I was still the better friend. I  _am_ the better friend, and you’re proving it by just staying here sulking.”

Their friendship might’ve taken a beating, but there were lines that just shouldn’t be crossed when working people in the same field. Like physically attacking another hero. That would be a bad idea, though he couldn’t deny that was tempted. Hunter pushed him back, reminding himself not to do anything stupid. Anything  _too_  damaging.

“It can get him hurt,” Hunter muttered. At Roy’s questioning look, he continued. “Today, Captain Cold saw my face. He recognized me. If I put on the costume and go out looking for him, with my leg like this, he’ll know I’m Zoom for sure. And what do you think they’ll do once they realize the person they took is close to me and the Flash? The Rogues  _despise_  me.”

Their hatred for Zoom had always been something Hunter prided himself himself on, but now that Wally was in their hands, the pride had turned into fear and it was killing him. Any wrong move, if the one he’d already made hadn’t turned things sour already, could get Wally hurt. The Rogues didn’t make it a habit of hurting civilians and hostages were usually given back in one slightly battered piece, but if they realized that Wally was important to Flash and Zoom, he didn’t know how they would react. They could try to keep him longer for leverage. Hell, if they were feeling vindictive enough, they...

He couldn’t finish the thought. He’d heard stories about what happened when a secret got blown. He’d studied some of them, especially the more recent ones, and recalled how some people were found practically ripped in half by means unknown, and the only correlation the victims had was that they were all associated with their local heroes.

“Are you goddamn kidding me? You’re worried the kid’s going to get hurt if you go out looking for him, but he’s going to get hurt regardless of  _what_  you do! You know what makes a good friend? Someone who pulls out all the stops when you need help. They can be killing him right  _now_  while you sit here freaking out like you always do. Or you can take control you can get and help save your friend.”

“One wrong move—”

“You’ve been doing covert missions for the Justice League for three years, and you’re worried you might make it worse?”

“Those three years haven’t been perfect, Roy,” Hunter said. 

“Are you talking about when you went after Chillblaine?” Roy said. He’d never told Roy about what happened. He never told anyone on the team, actually, though he knew they’d heard about it from the news back when it happened. “You couldn’t have known it was a trap. That was a fluke.”

“It wasn’t. Corley was dumb. He had below-average intelligence, and I underestimated him because of it. I should’ve been more careful from the very start,” Hunter said. It was the story of his life, really. Making careless mistakes that resulted in other people getting hurt. “I didn’t scout ahead of the task force to check for threats, and when people got hurt, I didn’t stop to make sure they were all right.” 

A silence followed his admittance. Roy didn’t say anything, didn’t seem to know _what_  to say, but Hunter couldn’t take any pleasure out of shutting him up. Not like this. For a moment, he looked apprehensive, and Hunter wasn’t sure why. The expression quickly disappeared, replaced by exasperation, and Roy shook his head, apparently done with trying to persuade Hunter to come with him. 

“I guess if you’re that incompetent, your friend is better off with me looking for him anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand the Zoom drama comes to an end (temporarily). On a not-Network related note, I have FINALLY managed to finish the first draft of Part 5 at 62k words. I'm still almost 15k behind schedule, but it's something,


	16. Chapter 16

Wally had given it a bit of thought before. He'd been thinking about it since Heat Wave had debuted as a flamethrower-wielding villain. He thought about it the other day when Mick had gotten his hands on a match and a box of napkins at Rick's bar. In fact, it was hard  _not_  to think about it, when he came to realize that the fire wasn't just Mick's weapon—it was his  _passion_.

But Wally certainly wasn't thinking of it now as the entire world vanished in a blur of colors as he ran faster than he had ever gone before in wild, panicked circles. Wally fell into a clumsy tumble and began to roll the fire out, wondering why the pain wasn't going away. The panic grew as, somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized the fire was still  _spreading_ , and Heat Wave was a fucking  _monster_ , and, god, was this what Uncle Barry went through whenever he had to fight the Rogues? Despite his best efforts to keep moving, to keep trying to smother the flames, Wally felt his limbs begin to slow down and an uncanny chill to sweep over his entire body, and for a brief moment, he wondered if he was dying.

The world grew slower around him, blurred colors sharpening into solid objects, and somewhere in a distant part of his mind, he began to notice that his body was enveloped in a strange, suffocatingly cool sensation where it was hard to breath and harder to move but at least didn’t feel like he’d been  _set on fire_. After a few moments, basking in the absence of pain, Wally looked up to find himself staring down the barrel of Captain Cold's pistol. His mind was still racing, even though his body was not, and if he had been capable of speech, Wally was sure he would've been babbling his thanks. Instead, he was content to just lay on the ground as he sorted out his jumbled thoughts, his body trembling from the sudden burning heat and freezing cold, both of which could have probably killed an ordinary person.

“What the  _hell_  is going on here?” someone said from behind him. It wasn't Mick or Digger or Cold. It was Mirror Master. Sam must have taken them through his mirrors, Wally realized as he looked over his shoulder to see Sam emerging from the surface of a wide mirror that took up the side of the room. They were all in what Wally assumed to be the Rogues' personal hideout. The one that, as only a part-time Rogue, he wasn't invited to. The Mirror Master stood over him, and Wally was staring at his reflection in the trick mirror, not moving, not sure if he could smack the mirror out of his hand fast enough if Sam decided to do anything. One wrong move and Sam could trap him back inside the mirror he had been transported through for God knows how long. Maybe if he could move faster than the light particles...

“You were  _late_ ,” Cold growled, starting to stomp over to them with a particularly irritable look on his face. 

“Well, how about  _you_  try looking through thousands of windows in the downtown area and seeing if you can find someone in particular? This is new to me,” Sam said defensively. He waved the mirror pistol down at Wally. “Who's this?” 

Wally took advantage of the movement, knocking the mirror away from his face with a scowl because he'd just been set on fire, everything  _hurt_ , and he was in a bad mood. “Get that thing out of my face,” he muttered, and in a flash, he had staggered back up to his feet. “What the hell is wrong with you guys?” 

His bravado fell short when, as soon as he was on his feet, he collapsed against a wall and had to force himself not to slide back onto the floor into a ball. Instead, he steeled himself himself against the pain and started picking off the burnt ruins of his shirt, wincing whenever it snagged on his burnt skin. 

“You wouldn't have gotten caught in the crossfire if you had just quit it with the heroics, Kid,” Cold said unsympathetically as he walked up to Wally and released a blast of cool air against a burn on Wally's side and shoulder. Wally yelped and swore but eventually relaxed, relieved by the icy numbness.

“Wait...  _Kid_?” Digger started, a shocked expression on his face as Wally’s familiar voice  _finally_  registered in his mind. 

“Digger. Mick,” Wally replied shortly, giving them a curt, annoyed nod in greeting as he raked an admittedly shaky hand through his hair, though his head felt mostly intact. He felt uncomfortable like this, his hair mussed up and decidedly nothing like the Kid everyone in the room knew. They were looking at Wally now, something he just couldn’t have. Cold was sharper than the others. He had already started piecing things together during the fight, and Wally had to play things even more carefully now. “Nice seeing you.”

Mick pulled off his oxygen mask and looked at Wally with a wide, shocked expression, mixed with some guilt as he realized what his pyromania had nearly done to his teammate. Wally didn't help ease the shame Mick felt. The man was generally harmless when he wasn't in the mood, but if it hadn't been for Wally's accelerated regeneration he would have  _died_. 

Even with the regeneration, which helped heal him even as he burned, nearly his entire back, his right side from shoulder to hip, and a portion of his shoulder had been left an angry shade of red at the very least. Judging from the occasional feeling of something trickling down his back, there were patches where the skin had been more badly burnt than the rest of him. Now that his adrenaline rush was fading, he was pretty sure he was going to have a number of large red welts and blisters littering his skin. God.

Wally knew he had the ability to speed up his healing. He considered himself lucky to have it; otherwise, his family might've noticed the numerous scrapes and injuries he frequently picked up as the Kid. But he hadn't known how his enhanced recovery would fare against Heat Wave's flamethrower. Barry might be able to survive that thing with little more than a burn that would fade within a day, but  _Wally wasn't Barry_. He never knew how his speed or regeneration compared to the Flash's, especially when it came to burns, and this had been one subject of debate that he  _hadn't_  intended to experiment on himself.

“Kid?” he said hoarsely. “You're—”

“Not on fire anymore, no thanks to you,” Wally said. If it scarred, he’d be so pissed. He didn’t know how he’d explain it to his family, who would surely realize the Wally had recovered from his wounds much too quickly. But Wally held his tongue, not pressing the issue any further. He needed to focus. They had seen his face. That couldn't be helped. He wondered if they had seen Hunter's. 

As if he knew what Wally was thinking, Captain Cold spoke up. “We've got more important issues to talk about than Mick's problem,” he said, looking none too happy as he glared Wally down. “Like your choice in friends.”

Wally felt light-headed and a little sick, and not just from the pain. Okay, so Cold, against all odds, had somehow managed to put two and two together. There was no proof. The situation was salvageable. 

“What are you talking about?” Wally asked, putting on his most innocent, incredulous look. Innocent for the Rogues being furrowed eyebrows and squinted eyes with a partly-confused, partly-accusing expression on his face. “You guys are  _not_  my friends.”

The looks on the other Rogues' faces proved that his words were almost enough to derail the conversation, but Cold didn't look the least bit swayed. “You  _know_ what I'm talking about. Care to explain to everyone else, or should I?”

The room fell silent after that, and Wally could practically feel everyone's eyes settling on him, could practically hear the accusations as they prepared to roast him for answers, demanding the truth. Wally wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to string himself up. Still salvageable, he repeated in his head, carefully controlling his expression. Still salvageable. 

“You should do it, because I  _don't_  have any idea what you're talking about,” Wally said. 

“I'm talking about your friend with the crutches,” Cold said, and he paused, either for dramatic effect or for Wally to explain himself. 

Wally finally let a bit of his dread show. “Guys, he...” he said slowly. “It's not what you think. It's not actually that big a deal—”

“Being friends with Zoom is kind of a  _big fucking deal_ ,” Cold cut him off, and his words were met with shocked stares and then outraged accusations. 

“Whoa, whoa!” Wally said, backing up a few steps. “Okay, wait, if that's what you're thinking, then this is  _really_  not what you think. There's no way he's Zoom.”

Wally thought it had been a pretty convincing act, but as solid as it was, it would take more than an insistent denial to sway the Rogues' interest and throw off Cold's suspicions. 

“Bullshit,” Cold said. “Who is he?”

“He's nobody,” he insisted. “He's just a friend.”

“If he's nobody important, then you shouldn't be opposed to telling us his name,” Mirror Master pointed out, but Wally scoffed in response

“Ah, hell yes, I  _should_ ,” Wally said. “I'm not going to let you go after my friend, thinking he's Zoom. You'll  _kill_  him.”

“If he is Zoom,  _maybe_. Sure. If he isn't, the worse that could happen is that he'll get a little roughed up,” Digger said. “Probably.”

“You touch him, and I'll shove your boomerang so far—”

“ _Wally_ ,” Cold interrupted, trying out his name, and Wally wanted to swear and shout. Stupid Hunter, shouting out his name like that. Stupid Cold, for using it. Trying to fix this new name to the Kid's new face. 

“ _Don't_  call me that!” Wally turned on him. The last, and the  _only_  Rogue who ever knew his name was Piper, and it was a sore reminder. “Don't mix us up. I keep my life organized, I've kept my lives  _separate_ , and you  _don't_  get to call me that. When I'm with you, I'm the Kid, and that's  _it_! You don't get to call me  _Wally_ , you don't get talk to Wally's  _friends_ , you don't get involved with Wally's  _life_. We had an understanding, Cold. Stay away from my personal life.” 

Wally could already  _feel_  his two lives beginning to mesh irreparably, despite all his efforts. He could hear his own voice in the Kid's demand, the subtle desperation to maintain an ordinary life underlying his words. He wondered if the Rogues could hear it too. Cold was watching him expressionlessly. If he was looking for inconsistencies in the Kid's behavior, then he'd certainly found it.

“Well, it's your personal life that decided to get involved with your professional life,” Cold finally said. “Your friend—”

“ _Isn't_  Zoom. Just because the bottom half of his face has some sort of a passing resemblance doesn't mean anything. After Green Arrow got that ridiculous thing on his face, every blond middle aged man started trimming their beards the exact same way.”

“It's not just about what he looks like,” Cold said. “You told us you broke Zoom's knee, and now your friend is on a pair of crutches. That's a pretty big coincidence.”

“Coincidences are pretty weirdly  _common_  around here. Look at  _us_. I mean, statistically, people like us are commonplace, but if you calculate all the coincidences that led to what we are now, we should be pretty damn rare. The fact that my friend and Zoom both had leg injuries might be suspicious, but they aren't the same people,” Wally said, and he paused for a brief moment, considering his stories and making sure they weren't too far from the truth, or at least the supposed truths. “Aside from the fact that you're comparing Zoom's shin to my friend's knee, there's also the fact that I was there both times they got hurt. My friend got hit by a car.”

“ _Really,_ ” Digger said, sounding skeptical.

“Yes,  _really_ ,” he growled, and he pretended to hesitate. “Aside from the fact that it’s the wrong leg, I was  _there_  when his accident happened. It was a hit-and-run driver, and we didn’t catch who did it, but there’s proof.” There really was proof, even if he couldn’t really show them. He refused to give Hunter’s name out.

Wally glared at the other Rogues, who didn't look entirely convinced, daring them to try and refute anything he said. If they looked closer into his story, they would find a hospital record, police report, and even a small news story on the accident, courtesy of Aunt Iris. Hunter had a lot of people to back his story up. All Wally had to do was shove the proof in the Rogues' faces.

Cold stared Wally down, watching him for any sign of hesitation, listening for any waver in Wally's voice, looking for anything Wally might have said or done to damn himself. He couldn't blame the Rogues for their distrust. While Wally had never outright lied to them before, he never hid the fact that he kept a lot of information from them. The fact that Wally was just  _telling_  them what happened probably felt even more suspicious. 

“What else?” Wally challenged him. “What other proof did you have? Back downtown? That wasn't Zoom running in to save me and then disappearing. That was me  _running_.”

“Well, what about him going after us with Red Arrow and Aquarius?” Cold said. “I saw you from the window, Kid. The two of you headed for this building, and he knew I was here.”

“...Okay, so you're accusing him of telepathy now,” Wally said with a frown. He didn't understand the point Cold was trying to make. “Well, even if my friend  _is_ a psychic—and he is definitely not, by the way—that absolutely does not prove that he is Zoom.”

He looked at Wally as if he was stupid, but didn't comment on the odd tangent in the conversation. “I  _meant_  that no one in their right mind would come at us. When the Rogues come, people  _run_.”

“Oh.” Wally struggled for an excuse, but couldn't find anything other than a weak 'because he's a bullheaded idiot'. “That... Well, you guys aren't exactly popular, you know. A  _lot_  of people really don't like you. He just happens to hate you more than he fears you,” he eventually shrugged. 

“ _Really_ ,” came the skeptical response. 

Wally fidgeted a little bit. The evidence was only circumstantial. While they couldn't prove Hunter was Zoom, they couldn't be unconvinced, either. Wally wasn't sure how to get them to drop the subject. He thought about what Hunter would do. What Hunter did whenever Wally approached a private subject. He needed a distraction. A new bit of information that was ultimately harmless but comparable to the thought that Wally was friends with Zoom.

Inspiration struck.

“Look,” Wally said, adding a tone of desperation to his voice. “He's mostly harmless. Can't you just leave him alone?”

“What do you mean by mostly harmless?”

He cringed. The movement was a little light. He didn't want to overplay it. “Let's just drop the subject.”

“No. If he's not Zoom, who is he?” Cold demanded. 

“He's no one.”

“Who. Is. He?” Cold asked in that voice. Wally recognized the subtle change in tone. This was the tone that stopped Mick’s fire obsession cold. This was the tone that kept even someone as arrogant as Top from acting out. This was the tone that had the other Rogues following his orders. He put a hand on Wally’s shoulder; the touch alone was enough to make Wally wince. “You wouldn't put so much effort into keeping him away from us if he wasn't something important.” 

The threat of having his burn squeezed loomed over his head, and Wally decided then was a good time to cave in. 

“He's  _not_  important. Not to, you know, society as a whole, anyway,” Wally said, shrugging and and hunching his shoulders with a guilty expression, as if he were confessing something important to them. Or about to. “You just... don't like people like him.”

“Is he gay?” Digger asked immediately.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” Wally deadpanned. He deepened his scowl, but he silently cheered as he successfully began peeling them away from the subject of Zoom’s secret identity. “Seriously, that's the  _first_  thing that comes to your mind? Ow!” 

Cold put pressure on his burnt shoulder. “Just answer the question,” he said impatiently. Wally slumped his shoulders, and at the sign of his feigned crumbling resistance, Cold let go. 

“He goes to my school. It's where I met him, actually. He's a teacher's assistant, but it’s just a stepping stone while he focuses on getting his psychology degree. He does profiling.”

“He what?” Mirror Master asked, but Cold seemed to recognize the job from the way he shifted, his back straightened, and he looked even more alert than before.

“He builds psychological profiles. For the police,” he said finally, and the announcement was met by outraged cries from most of the Rogues. 

“What the hell are you doing, being friends with a cop?” Digger demanded.

“Well, he hasn't gone into law enforcement  _yet_!” Wally said defensively, though he silently cheered as their attention was drawn away from their suspicions of Zoom. “And all he does is, well, profile you guys. Technically harmless!”

“He's a  _pig_ ,” Mirror Master said. “Why the heck would you hang out when you know he's working to arrest you?”

“Because he's my friend.”

“Friends are replaceable, get another one,” Digger said. 

“I don't  _have_  any others!” Wally said, honestly angered by the comment. “And I don't want one either. I don't care about what you think.”

“What if he finds out?” Cold asked.

It was a question Wally frequently entertained in his head when he was alone and worrying over the details of his future heists. His constant presence in the home of his enemy didn't help ease his mind, always at Hunter's place, always seeing Hunter reading up on criminology and studying and editing his collection of profiles. 

“If he finds out, then he finds out,” Wally said. “Look, it's my choice. I  _don't_  want any of you getting involved in my personal life, I  _don't_  want you blowing my cover. I'm...  _enjoying_  this life. I don't want Wally and the Kid to get stirred up together.”

They looked ready to continuing arguing over his friendship with this future pig, but Cold shook his head. “Fine. Whatever,” he said decisively, silencing any argument the Rogues might have had. “This conversation is over with.”

After exchanging unhappy glances, the other Rogues eventually left. Wally was going to take this as his cue to leave too, but Cold blocked his way from the door, arms still crossed in front of his chest with a distinct look of disapproval. 

“What do you want now?” Wally asked, annoyed. He was tempted to push past Cold, but he'd already created enough of a stir among the Rogues. He figured it was better not to push his luck. 

“You can't play both lives forever, you know,” Cold said. “This whole thing is going to backfire on you.”

“I'm pretty sure I can outrun the cops in my sleep,” he replied, rolling his eyes. 

“And can you outrun Zoom?”

Wally felt his heart seize in his chest at that. The other Rogues seemed to have bought Wally's explanation, but Cold? He  _knew_. 

“...I guess we'll find out,” he said, not directly acknowledging Cold's implications. Instead, his mind wandered over to what he might need to increase his running speed. His current costume was convenient for blending into a crowd. Zoom was fast. He'd need to be more streamlined.

“Being his friend when he finds out who you are probably isn't going to make it any easier on you. He'll probably end up taking it personally,” Cold warned him. 

“You're not going to... try and stop me?” Wally asked. 

“Telling you guys what you ought to do never did us any good. Didn't stick with Piper, ain't gonna stick with you,” Cold muttered. “And if you're not going to listen, I'm not gonna bother.” 

“That is... uncharacteristically laissez-faire of you,” Wally said. Suspicion colored his thoughts. Cold wasn't the type of leader who led the Rogues with a strict set of rules—keeping the Rogues on a short leash would only have them turning on him and each other—but there were a few rules of common sense they were to follow or risk a violent expulsion. Wally had been certain that fraternizing with the enemy would've been one of them.

“Some lessons gotta be learned the hard way.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I missed updating last week! I had the date of a test wrong and ended up cramming for multiple tests because I got caught flat-footed.

It was an ominous response. Wally really didn't have a response to that, and so he instead shrugged mutely, refusing to address the issue. 

“If you ask me,” Cold finally said, and Wally resisted the urge to point out that he really  _wasn't_  asking for his opinion, “whoever this guy is, you’re better off cutting your ties with him.”

“What? Why?” Wally demanded. 

“You know why. You saw him charge straight at us. He might be Zoom, in which case we already know he hates our guts. So much that he’d forget he had a civilian tagging along behind him,” Cold said. 

“Wait, what civilian?” he asked. “Who?”

“ _You_ , you idiot.” 

“Oh.” 

...Wally couldn’t really argue with that. 

“Or he’s not Zoom. In which case, he’s a civilian who hates us so much, he’d chase after us on a pair of crutches just to get a chance to attack us. Either way, he hates Rogues. He hates  _you_. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“He likes  _me_ ,” Wally immediately insisted, but it seemed to be the wrong thing to say, and Cold sent him an irritated look. 

“You think that makes it any better?” he said scathingly. “Like it or not, you're a Rogue, and one of you is going to have to kick the other's ass. Having a history with him isn't going to make it better. It'll make things complicated. And  _worse_.”

Wally really couldn't argue with that. “Probably. But I think I'll take my chances. At this point, I think he'd go after me even if I cut ties with him now,” Wally sighed. Cold made a sound that clearly meant he thought Wally was being a complete and utter dumbass for everything he'd ever done and would do with Zoom. “Look, don't sweat it,” Wally said. “I'll deal with this myself when the time comes.”

Cold made a 'tch' sound in the side of his mouth, chipped teeth slightly bared in skepticism, and if Cold were a more expressive man, Wally was sure he'd have been rolling his eyes. “Yeah, right,” he said. “The moment it explodes in your face, you're going to come crying to us to save your stupid ass.”

Wally scoffed. “Why the hell would I go to you guys for help?” he asked.

Cold's mouth twitched in annoyance, a thin grimace and a furrow deepening in his brow, and Wally couldn't tell if the man was offended or just in his generally cranky state. 

“Because you're a  _Rogue_ ,” Cold said. “And when the Rogues meet an enemy, we take turns turning them into a bloody smear on the ground.”

Huh. The subtle admittance that, despite being considered the most untrustworthy member on a team of violent sociopaths, the Rogues would have his back was oddly comforting in a way that left Wally a little crept out. After all, he was one of them only in name. They worked separate jobs, he never associated with them out of costume, and he kept all his secrets from them. Heck, they made it a  _point_  to keep him out of the loop. It was easy to see them as a separate group whose territory he simply worked on. Thinking of them as actual teammates was a bit strange, despite knowing that was what they were.

“You  _realize_ ,” Wally started slowly, “that this means I'm going to run to you for every single problem from now on, right?”

“Don't push your luck,” he warned Wally. “And get the hell out of here. I'm sure your family is appreciating every second of your disappearance right about now.”

Wally winced. Right. The events of the day had distracted him. To be fair, the issue of Zoom's secret identity had been a lot more life-threatening than his mother worrying over his disappearance. Considering her efforts to close the gap between them, Wally was pretty sure she was  _never_  going to let him out of her sight after this. Still, as guilty as he felt, Wally couldn't go back to her and ease her worries just yet. His torso was still burned, and he couldn't go back until it was healed up. Otherwise, he'd run the risk of someone noticing the unnatural speed of his regenerating skin. 

“I don’t think I can go back looking like this,” Wally said, gesturing towards his wrecked clothing and his burn wounds. The movement alone stung, and he had to remind himself to move more slowly. 

Cold made an irritated sound. “I tell you to take a walk, you come back with more problems,” he muttered. “Bathroom’s down the stairs, two doors to the left. There should be some stuff in there you can use to patch yourself up.”

Thank god. Wally stumbled down the stairs to the bathroom. The door was hanging off by its hinges, half-ripped from the wall, and as much as he preferred privacy, he wasn’t in the mood to deal with the awkward that would ensue if he was the one to break it. 

After digging through the medicine cabinet and checking underneath the sink, Wally actually ended up finding the first aid kit in the bathtub, dusty and old, which went to show just how often they used the tub. Wally fiddled with its contents. It was probably enough to cover the worst of his burns, but what worried him the most was the fact that he had no idea how he was going to wrap himself when he could barely move. 

But first things first, he needed to get rid of the rest of his shirt. 

 _Like a bandaid,_  Wally thought to himself, preparing to pull it off in one whole motion.  _Like a bandaid._

Nope. Didn’t fly. He only managed to pull his shirt up over his head before the pain stopped him, leaving him literally unable to move any further. He could barely breathe, and silently begged his body to keep moving the rest of the way, but he couldn’t. 

Instead, he just stood there, arms raised above his head and his shirt wrapped around his face like a giant bag. Okay. Time for a break. While he was taking a breather and a moment to clear his thoughts of pain and burns, he felt someone lift the shirt off Wally’s head for him. 

Wally looked up blearily and found himself face to face with the person who set him on fire in the first place. “Heat Wave,” he said, not sure whether to feel embarrassed or angry. He was too tired for both. 

“Looked to me like you needed help,” he said slowly. 

Wally bit back the urge to tell Heat Wave that he was the one who needed help. Temptation to be a smartass aside, he did need help dealing with his burns. Snapping Heat Wave into a retreat wouldn’t do Wally any good, especially when he could milk for favors. Heat Wave didn’t look especially guilty over what he’d done—a fact that bothered Wally quite a bit—but the Rogue seemed to have enough sense that reparations needed to be made. And Wally could really use some of those reparations.

“So help me,” he said, holding up the gauze. “What do I do?”

Heat Wave looked a little confused for a moment. This was probably Piper’s old thing, but luckily, Heat Wave had had enough experience to know how to treat a burn, showing Wally which antibiotic ointment to use and wrapping gauze around Wally’s wounds for him when he couldn’t reach around his torso by himself. 

“...Are you mad?”

“It’s been fifteen minutes since you set me on fire. I’m in pain, my skin is either peeling off or bleeding, and I’m pretty sure some of these are going to scar,” Wally said, and as a response, he had a small pill bottle pressed into his hands. “What is this?”

“Something for pain.”

“Don’t you have anything... not a drug?” It reminded him a bit of Hunter and when he had drugged him. He shifted uncomfortably. 

“We got vodka in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, no, I’ll take this,” Wally said, opening the bottle and pulling out one of the pills. 

Wally's shirt was bundled up and tossed in the sink, now nothing more than a burnt wad of cloth that still smelled of char and smoke. Mick was staring at it where it rested on the count with a hazy, far-off look in his eye. He didn't look sorry at all, and Wally was pretty sure the only reason he was here was probably because even the Rogues had a reluctant understanding that you can't just set your teammates on fire without some show of penance. He was probably more embarrassed by his own lack of control than actually burning Wally.

He resisted the urge to ask Mick if he wanted time alone with the evidence of his screw-up, but the man was already struggling to hide the evidence of his psychoses, and Wally wasn't going to aggravate the situation. He was the 'only sane man' here, after all. He'd rather stay intact as long as possible.

“You owe me a T-shirt. We’re still not okay, but it’ll be a start,” Wally said. 

“A T-shirt...?” Mick said. 

“Yeah, it’s a thing people wear nowadays. Covers the upper body. It was my favorite shirt. Got it at the Flash museum. Fifteen bucks. Hint-hint,” Wally said. Heat Wave looked at him, as if he were unsure if Wally was serious or not. “I’m not joking.”

“But—”

“You’ll have to walk in and buy it yourself, in person,” Wally grinned, at which point, Heat Wave decided to stop taking him seriously, just going through his pockets and slapping a twenty dollar bill in Wally’s hand. Wally cringed a little under the force but pocketed it with a grin. He was all bandaged up now, and the painkillers were kicking in, putting him in a more forgiving mood. 

“I've seen the Flash burn,” Heat Wave said as they left the bathroom, his voice filled with quiet appreciation for his own work. 

Wally gave him a look, though the older Rogue didn’t seem to notice it. Wally always opted to work alone, never running alongside the Rogues on jobs. The Rogues each had their ticks and quirks, he knew. Heat Wave's quirk just so happened to be his tendency to transform from the unassuming, harmless looking Mick to the firemongering criminal Heat Wave at nothing more than the presence of a match. The fire stirred something in Mick—something bright and hot. Wally really preferred the slow Mick. 

“But he was always back on the streets the next day,” he continued. “Do you think he has scars?”

A few, Wally knew, but nothing more than a few light burns on his hands and arms, easily passable for an accident in the kitchen or the lab. They were remnants from a time before Uncle Barry had upgraded his suit to something more more heat resistant. Wally felt lucky to have avoided any significant burn. His T-shirt wasn't quite as well adapted to crime fighting and flame-throwers.

“We heal fast,” Wally said, a little more curtly than he intended. He tilted his head slightly and patted his shoulder lightly, only to hide a wince as it stung a little more than he expected, though still less than it could have. Probably a combination of his accelerated healing and the Rogues’ undoubtedly stolen stash of drugs. “I'm sticking around until I'm all good, then I can go home and say I escaped without a single scratch. I'm about to ruin your good reputation as bad guys,” he joked, only to be completely ignored.

“You caught fire more easily than the Flash did,” he said absentmindedly, though he still sounded a little too reminiscent for Wally’s taste.

“Yeah, don’t let it keep you up at night,” Wally muttered. 

Heat Wave paused, reflecting on what he said before continuing in a less reverent tone. “You should get Gambi to design you a better costume,” he said. “One less flammable.”

“Planning on roasting me a second time?” Wally asked. “Give me one freaking second, please. Anyway, Piper took me to see him before. You know, before he bailed on us. Apparently, I’m a tricky customer. He can’t come up with anything durable and friction-resistant but still light enough that it won’t get in my way or wear me out when I run.”

“What about Weather Wizard’s material?” he said. “Mardon talks about how his fabric is resistant to five hundred miles per hour winds.”

“Tried it, didn’t work. Too heavy and apparently not as durable for me. Weather Wizard might be able to endure five hundred miles per hour winds, but he didn’t have to run in it,” Wally said. “Whatever. At least it saves me money.”

“What are you saving up for?” Heat Wave asked. 

Wally shrugged. “I don’t know, but I like having it. It’s just kind of building up since I can’t spend it on anything. I bought a new wallet, nothing too fancy, and I still got questions as to how I could afford it.”

“You’re not using any of your money?”

“It’s not as if I need to buy any special grade cyclotron for cold guns or anything. I’m low maintenance,” Wally said. He backtracked through the Rogues’ safehouse to find the kitchen, which he had passed by on the way to the bathroom. It was hard to miss: a large room joined with another, courtesy of a large hole in the wall that was, coincidentally, roughly the size of a grown man. The Rogues kept a small, cheap refrigerator, filled almost entirely with nothing but beer, but after rummaging around, Wally managed to procure an untouched jar of peanut butter, which was a lot better than nothing, at least. “I don’t really need anything.”

“You need a shirt,” another voice cut in. Digger walked in, still carrying his boomerang bandolier over his shoulder. Wally wondered if he still would’ve been carrying it if Wally wasn’t around. He scowled, looking Wally up and down. “This ain't your place, quit walking around here half-naked like you own it.”

It was a little unfair, considering the fact that it was Mick who roasted his shirt and a fair bit of his skin.

“ Like I want to. The place is a dump,” he said, digging around until he found a fancy spoon made of silver. It probably belonged to a set in a museum somewhere. He rinsed it off in the sink and leaned against the counter, wary of his burns. They were already beginning to feel better, but it could be a few days until they completely healed over. He wanted to ask the story behind the hole in the wall or the three plungers in the bathroom, but decided against it. “What was up with Red Arrow and Aquarius?”

“We can handle them,” Digger snorted. “Toe to toe, I'll admit, Mick and I might be at a standstill with them, but we're Rogues. We've got strength  _and_  strength in numbers.”

“I don’t care if you guys can handle yourselves or not,” Wally rolled his eyes. He started shoveling the spoon into the peanut butter and eating it by itself. “I’m wondering why they’re here. Well, I heard rumors that we’ve had criminals arriving in town, and that the League is considering following them in. Maybe Red Arrow and Aquarius are scouting things out?”

“They have the Flash and Zoom for that,” Heat Wave said. “But since Zoom’s been benched, he could be shorthanded.”

“The crime rates are rising. The Flash could be overwhelmed,” Wally said, his voice sounding thick with peanut butter. “But why are criminals gathering here in the first place?”

“Probably the Network planning something big,” Digger said. Like... V9? “Yeah, you’re new, so you probably haven’t heard of them, but they’re basically the black market for anything you could name. Particularly specialized commodities. Think Craigslist for our kind of people.”

“Shouldn’t we go and warn them?” Wally asked. “How do we find—?”

“We don’t. The Network can fend for themselves,” Digger said.

“But if they keep drawing the League’s attention like this—” Wally said before he was cut off again.

“Then we just lay low,” Heat Wave cut in patiently. “Dealing with them used to be Piper’s job, but we’re not obligated to do anything for them. The last time we got caught up in their business, Cold got sent to Belle Reve penitentiary, and after the Network got Cold stuck in there in the first place, we had to work  _for_  them until we got enough leverage to get him out.”

“There’s a reason you haven’t heard about them until now,” Digger said. “Cold doesn’t want you involved with them. Working with the Network gets you in contact with... with the big dogs, but remember, you're on the D-list. They’ll eat you alive.”

His mood ruined—so close to a lead and he couldn’t pry it out of his own teammates—he made a face and backed out of the kitchen. “Fine,” he said. “I won’t bother you guys about it again.”

Maybe Hunter knew something about V9.

“Where are you going?” Mick asked.

“I’m going to get a shirt, and then go home!” Wally said. “My family kind of thinks I’ve been kidnapped!”

As Wally left the Rogues’ hideout, he tossed the now-empty jar of peanut butter to the side, pocketed the silver spoon, and jumped at the sound of a hiss.

He glanced around frantically, eyes searching the sloppy overgrown lawn for any signs of movement, until he realized the hissing sounds came from the spoon itself, gripped in his hands. Holding it up to the light, he saw a... face?

“Mirror Master?” he said, thrown off by the sight of an upside down face in his spoon. “What are you...?  _Did I put you in my mouth?_ ”

“Lower the volume!” Mirror Master said crossly, not answering Wally’s question.

“What do you want?” Wally asked.

“Couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Mick and Digger,” he said. “Thought I’d help you out myself.”

“Why?” Wally said.

“Mick and Digger might toady up to Cold, but I still believe in such a thing as honor amongst thieves,” Mirror Master said, to which Wally gave him a skeptical stare. “So I’m going to tell you how to find the Network, but you have to swear to me you won’t tell Cold or Mick or Digger you heard this from me, okay?”

Wally grinned. Finally. He was making progress.

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”


	18. Chapter 18

Wally really shouldn't have been surprised by the Network's apparent base of operations. If the other criminals native to the city were anything to go by, abandoned warehouses and other buildings were apparently the local favorite choice of secret headquarters. Central City was occupied by hundreds of thousands of people, half of which were possibly squatters.

Getting an invite to see the leader of the Network was apparently next to impossible, but Wally didn't need to go as far as the leader anyway. All he needed was to scout out the area. Any other intel he managed to get his hands on was just a bonus.

One quick run to his storage unit, and he was back in his preferred costume. He kept an extra change of clothes close to him, on the rooftop of a building nearby the Network's hideout, to change into on the way home. He wanted to get his business with this “Network” finished as quickly as he could so he could change back into Wally and see his family again.

They had to be worried about him.

Wally pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he pushed open the heavy steel doors to the Network's warehouse. There was a platform at the far end of the wall. He felt around for a switch or a latch of some sort. Mirror Master had told him about some sort of secret entrance leading underground around there but didn’t know the details himself. That information, the Pied Piper had taken with him to wherever he had gone. 

Wally halted at the sound of groaning steel behind him and looked over his shoulder, seeing nothing but scrap metal. Wally circled around the piles, checking for any signs of people before frowning. There wasn't a single person in sight who could have caused the noise.

Shaking his head, Wally approached the platform again. He froze, and not entirely of his own accord.

His hands shook slightly with light exertion as he tried to move, only to find an unseen force hindering his movements. It was different from the Martian girl’s telekinesis. It felt like his body was simple refusing to move from within. He pulled his arm closer, before stopping, satisfied to know that he both had someone's attention and was still capable of moving if he tried hard enough.

“Who are you?” a woman's voice demanded, echoing slightly in the building.

Wally's eyes shifted skywards as he saw a woman floating in the air above him. Her costume was different, closer to plated armor rather than the metallic skintight bodysuit she’d been in last time, but he would’ve recognized her out of anywhere.

“Magenta?” he said. It was the assassin he’d met weeks ago. She’d manipulated metal and used it to trap him, though there wasn’t a single bit of shrapnel in sight. No, he was trapped in place by his own body. Wally recognized this from a movie. He imagined it was difficult maintain control over all the iron in his blood, though, considering the sheer number of particles and the fluidity of his blood. Wally gingerly leaned forward and back, clumsy but not immobile. His injuries flared with the exertion, but now he knew: her control wasn’t perfect. He still had some control over his body and wasn’t completely defenseless.

“ _You_...!” she gritted her teeth, recognizing him as well. Scraps of metal flew across the area, nearly hitting Wally if it hadn’t been for his own speed.

“Whoa!” he said, breaking free of her hold and ducking beneath a giant piece of flying shrapnel. His burns were throbbing fiercely again. A quick raid at the closest pharmaceutical to the Rogues hideout meant he was able to get the painkillers and antibiotics he probably needed, but medication didn’t seem to last very long with his abilities. “You seem pretty upset.”

“You just left me lying on the ground,” she said.

“The very first moment we met, you tried to kill me, and you expect me to risk my own life trying to carry someone wearing fifty pounds of metal?” Wally asked. “Hah, no. I checked your pulse, that’s going to have to be good enough for you.”

And he pulled out his secret weapon, picked up from his storage unit.

He had fiddled enough with Robin’s grappling hook a few times after getting it. The thing often struck with enough force to leave cracks in bricks, something Wally was going to have to learn to control better, but he also found out it came with another mode. Robin’s grappling gun came with a maghook, and it was beautiful.

Magenta might have had a major advantage of him, safe in the sky, but Wally was quickly learning ways around that, firing off the maghook in the air at her. A plate of metal slid up to cover her face, protecting her from the impact, but when Wally withdrew the line, she came down with it, the metal peeling away from her to reveal a shocked expression.

Her magnetic powers were affected by opposing magnetic waves. Good to know, Wally yanked the hook again to try and free it completely until it came loose. Along with a large chunk of Magenta’s armor and leaving her exposed from shoulder to chest. Wally immediately looked away.

“ _Sorry_!” he shouted immediately.

Wally couldn't ever say he'd ever been punched by a Transformer before, but he was pretty sure this was what it would have felt like when over a thousand pounds of steel knocked him across the room.

Wally landed in another pile of scrap metal—this one thankfully nonmoving—and staggered in confusion and blinding agony. It took him a few moments to realize that the scrap metal  _was_  a man, a man whose skin was covered in steel armor and plates. No, whose skin  _consisted_  of steel armor and plates. It was an odd sight that Wally would have found fascinating if it weren't for the fact that he was watching a thousand pound pile of scrap metal charge at him with an enraged roar.

Ignoring his pain, he darted around the hill of metal, ducking and dodging metal chunks and shrapnel that the scrap-monster was throwing at him.

“Stay out of my way, I don’t need your help!” Magenta shouted, and Wally looked up at her. The assassin looked more furious than when Wally had torn a piece of her armor free. It helped that she’d been wearing something under the armor. Of course she’d wear something underneath. It would’ve chafed. It hadn’t occurred to him, and Wally felt dumb for assuming otherwise. Still, the amount of vitriol directed towards her apparent ally seemed unusual. The scrap metal monster of a man swung an arm again, ignoring Magenta’s protest, only to find his fist being forced to slow to a stop with a painful sounding screech. 

“ _Stop_.” She glared at Girder, eyes glowing from use of her powers and expression snarled with fury. 

Wally stood there, the massive fist only inches away from his face. As capable as he was of backing away, the brute force and Magenta’s ability to stop it with nothing more than her mind left him rooted to the spot.

“Yes,” a new voice interjected. “Stop it, Girder.”

‘Girder’ looked around with his beady eyes for the sound of the voice and then quickly lowered his fist. Wally followed his gaze and found a woman standing by the platform he had already approached twice. While Magenta’s features were angular and gently sloped, this woman looked sharp. And fiercer, too, with the series of tattoos lining the contours of her face.

“This guy—” Girder started, surprising Wally with the fact that he was capable of speech. The woman cut him off with nothing more than a sharp look, reminding Wally of the kinds he often got from Cold, though hers were considerably more knifelike than Cold’s had ever been. Plus, Cold never dressed in skintight leather, thank humanity.

“Magenta, go find where Axel went, for goodness's sake. And Girder... just go,” she said with a dismissive backhand. When Girder looked ready to argue, her look somehow managed to sharpen even further. “I can handle myself, Girder.”

Finally, the scrap metal man nodded and slowly trotted back to the other side of the warehouse where he apparently started. Magenta had opted to look away, floating further up towards the ceilings and resting against a particularly wide construction beam where she must've been sitting since he had arrived.

“So you're the Kid everybody's been whispering about,” the woman purred. “I expected someone a little older.”

“Oh, well you see, that's funny, because I'm called the  _Kid_ ,” Wally said, though he held back on the sarcasm and leaned towards a lighthearted tone.

“Well, I certainly don't mind,” she said, placing a hand on Wally's upper arm. “I don't often get to see criminals of your age climbing the ranks so quickly. Such a young face in this line of business. It's  _refreshing_...”

And he thought  _he_  could come on a little strong sometimes. Wally was considering how to delicately tell her she was a bit over his age bracket when he was relieved of the responsibility.

“I go by Blacksmith myself, but my name is Amunet Black. And you are?”

“The Kid,” he said simply, as if they hadn't already established that. There was a pause as she obviously waited for more, but that name was the only he was going to give her.

She smiled, looking unbothered by his preference for anonymity. “I was wondering when you'd finally surface. I assume you came here knowing what lies beneath this warehouse.”

“I know what you do here,” Wally said, “but I didn't come here to  _network_. There's been an issue recently. Criminals gathering in Central, and vigilantes following them here.”

Amunet's face twisted in annoyance. “This again? If you’re just here to deliver me a lecture, I suggest you go run home to Cold, boy,” she said crisply. “And tell him there's nothing he can do that'll change my mind. I'm not rescheduling my arrangements just because it’s giving you little Rogues a bit of competition.”

“...Huh?”

She inspected Wally, who didn't understand what had causing the sudden twists in the conversation. “Cold doesn't know you're here,” she eventually realized, a note of glee growing in her voice.

“What makes you think that?” Wally asked, trying to piece together the mental conversation. So Cold, and maybe all of the Rogues, had already known that the criminals were gathering? The fact that Cold had figured it would bring the League down on their heads won a small point of respect for his leader’s foresight.

“I've been wanting to meet you for a long time, Kid,” she said. “But Cold likes to keep his Rogues on a short leash. He didn't want you and me to meet.”

She worded it like it was a bad thing. “And why wouldn't he?”

“Possessiveness, I would guess. Rogues, always wanting to get their dirty mitts in everything. I suppose he didn't want you to realize there's more to life than being a Rogue. Working for me would provide you with greater business opportunities with lower risks,” she said in an enticing voice.

Oh. Wow, this was a job offer. Wally hadn't seen that coming. But as Digger had mentioned, if he was unlucky, they would want something from him. “As appealing as a change in the scenery seems, I need to sort out some personal matters before I ditch the old farts,” he said. It wasn't a complete lie. He did initially join the Rogues in order to submerge himself in their 'world' and eventually track down his father. “So I’m not going to be going anywhere any time soon. Anyway, I came here to warn you about the superheroes coming in, but it seemed like you already knew about them.”

“Red Arrow and Aquarius, yes, I know they started investigating in my business a while ago. It was thanks to you, actually. If you hadn't gotten into that tussle with them, they wouldn't have drawn their weapons. My associate, Brick, would never have recognized them otherwise,” she said, patting him on the shoulder in thanks. “You saved us a lot of trouble, Kid. It was a close call but because of you, we were able to tie up loose ends and keep the two of them out of the Network.”

Tie up loose ends. He was pretty sure that loose end was O’Hannegan. Wally recalled the day he snuck into O’Hannegan’s apartment and met Magenta. She’d killed him then. He was positive. Wally felt guilty for exposing the security risk. O'Hannegan had been a crook, but he hadn't really rated very high on the spectrum of villainy. At least he understood why this woman was being so oddly friendly with him. This was, by far, the most civil first meeting he'd had with any criminal.

“It's still close,” he said. “Heroes still know something's going on in these parts, and they're still watching.”

“I think we can handle Red Arrow and Aquarius,” Amunet said dismissively.

“And the Justice League?”

That definitely caught her attention. Her eyes immediately snapped to his face, all pretenses of casual conversation completely gone from her features, making the tattoos that streaked across her face look sharper and more threatening.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

“I've heard things. I've seen their sidekicks sniffing around. And their sidekicks don't go anywhere their mentors aren't watching,” he told her.

She looked only slightly dismayed, but more than anything else, she looked determined and pensive. “I suppose they  _would_  be alarmed by the presence of a superspeed serum,” she murmured. “And your presence probably isn't doing their peace of mind any favors, the way you handled Zoom.”

“ _Allegedly_  handled Zoom,” Wally said immediately. Amunet smiled, nodding her approval that Wally had caught it. “And I don’t have  _anything_  to do with Velocity 9.” Though in retrospect, if his father was the one behind the drug, then Velocity 9 may have very well been heavily influenced by his work. He couldn’t help the bitterness from showing on his face, causing Amunet to raise a brow.

“Well I  _know_  that,” she said in a slightly chiding tone. “If you were involved with it, you'd have been more involved in their operations.”

She had information he wanted. No, she had  _access_  that he wanted. Wally was combing through idea after idea, hoping he wasn't going to have to resort to taking advantage of her odd interest in him.

“So what's your interest in Velocity 9?” she asked. “It must've been personal. I heard you gave O'Hannegan quite the scare.”

Yeah. Having your dad swing by your place after setting your mother up to possibly be killed so he could beat you up and take the things he had worked so hard for was pretty personal, all right.

“Nah,” he lied, shrugging as if it didn't matter to him. “I was just asking questions. O'Hannegan just wasn't giving me the answers I wanted.”

“You wanted to know who was making the drugs,” she said knowingly, picking at the slight hole in Wally’s story. It wasn’t really a hole, though. Just a dark space rather than an outright mistake in Wally’s story. “He mentioned that before I had him pulled off the streets. Have you made any headway on that front?”

“Not enough,” Wally muttered, a little bitterly.

Amunet smiled at the cross shade of tone that had leaked into his voice. “Then this is your lucky day, Kid,” she said, pulling a card from her sleeve and hanging it out to him.

“What is this?” Wally asked, seeing nothing on the business card but a series of numbers.

“You'll need that to get past my enforcers,” Amunet said, tilting her head in the direction of Girder's overwhelmingly large back across the warehouse. “Those are the dates people are meeting here. I think you'll be interested in what the Network has to offer you.”

“Amunet, I don't mean to insult the work you do here, because you do great work,” he told her, “but I really don't think you'd have anything being sold that I'd actually need.”

“Oh, that's a pity,” she sighed melodramatically. “Because I thought you might be interested in the V9.”

Wally stared at her, only now realizing that what he held in his hands was exactly what he needed to get in on the Velocity 9 operation. “You're just—” he stuttered a little haltingly as he held up the invitation. “You're just handing this out to me? Just like that?”

“Consider us even for exposing Aquarius and Red Arrow. Plus, if you hadn't taken out Zoom, I'd have had more trouble organizing this around him  _and_  the Flash. You've lessened my workload. The least I could do is show you the fruits of my labor,” she said. “Your name and reputation might not be the most well known out of Central, but your presence has been noticed by criminals across the country. Let's just say it's boosted the V9's possible marketability; we have you to thank for advertisement”

Ouch.

“Well, I can’t say it was on purpose, but I’ll take you thanks anyway,” Wally said, tucking the card in a pocket. “But... you know that I don't support V9, don't you?” People might've whispered about him, but no one really knew much and Wally didn't want to give much away. Still, begrudgingly or not, Amunet worked alongside the Rogues, with Cold, specifically, and she had to know their stance on drugs, if not his own lack of support for Velocity 9.

“Of course,” she said. “And I understand completely: any good businessman keeps an eye on the competition. But some things cannot be stopped by a lone thief, even one with superabilities. But it's not too late to divert the competition.”

“What?”

“With the V9 finally tested, it's now time to start a more widespread production. They need funding for that. Now, stealing from me would be suicide,” she reminded him, just to clarify and discourage any thoughts from forming in his head.

Wally definitely wasn't going to admit that that was exactly what he had been thinking. He was thankful for the reminder. She did, after all, have a number of superpowered criminals at her beck and call, considering how invaluable her services were to people in this part of the country.

“ _But_ ,” Amunet continued, “it's not too late to buy out the competition, if you have the resources.”

Well, Wally thought with a smile, he  _was_  a thief. There was no reason he couldn't get what resources he'd need together. “I really like the way you think,” he grinned.

It felt good, finally having a plan. A path to take, a way to take his father down. The preliminary testing and marketing of Velocity 9 was over, and the manufacturer, his  _father_ , was preparing for mass productions. They were looking for buyers.

This was his way in.

“It’s a start,” she smiled. “I can trust you not to go running to the League, yes?”

“I have a spotless record. The last thing I want is the League coming out of nowhere to put a mark on it,” he scoffed.

And it was the truth, after all. He wouldn’t go running to the League. They were his bigger problem. The better way to deal with them would be to avoid giving them a reason to investigate in the first place. If the League was growing interested in the criminal activity centered around Central’s black market Network, then that’s what he was going to take down.


	19. Chapter 19

Things were good. Things were really, actually good. Of course, his father was still loose and almost definitely selling drugs that Wally accidentally made for him, but he was making  _progress_  in the steps to undo the damage. His project with his TA was progressing slowly, but smoothly for the most part. It could take some time, but within a few months, they could have a working prototype ready for testing as a counteragent to V9. He saved Hunter's life, he distracted most of the Rogues from uncovering Zoom's secret identity, and he was finally making progress with the Velocity 9 drug operation.

On top of that, Wally was safe from Zoom and Flash for now. He’d know when Hunter was back on duty, and Barry apparently had his hands full due to the rising crime rates—one thing he could thank the Network for, Wally supposed. His reprieve wouldn’t last long. He would stop his father from producing the V9, dispersing the Network’s meetings, the crime rate would go back down, and the Flash would be back chasing the local crooks, including Wally. He didn’t like the idea of facing Barry, but he wouldn’t have to worry about the full force of the League bearing down on his position. 

Everything was going to work out fine, and once this was over, everything would return to the status quo, just as it should. 

Wally pulled his new shirt over his head, wincing slightly after he raised his arms, and took another pill for the pain. Between getting set on fire and pelted at by large bits of metal and punched by Girder, he wasn’t sure the painkillers were going to last. He needed to pick up some more sometime. And some antibiotics just to be safe. But for now, it was time he go home. 

He massaged his cheeks with one hand, working the stupid grin out of his face and shaking his head at his luck. 

He pulled his shirt back on over his head, burnt and full of holes, and he mussed up his own hair, something to draw people's attentions away from his face just in case he broke character and started beaming like an idiot again. 

Tonight, he had done something  _right_ , even if there was no one else to appreciate it. 

And he had done it.

All.

By.

Himself.

...He needed to fix that “by himself” part, actually. Wally didn’t really know the first thing about taking down bad guys. That was  _supposed_  to be Robin’s thing.

And, of course, he wouldn’t be getting any help from the Rogues either. Not when Cold had apparently prohibited Wally from going to the Network, and even if he wasn’t on a leash, he couldn’t just ask them to take down their own side of the market. The Rogues and the Network might’ve been at odds with each other, but just because they weren’t peaceful with each other didn’t mean they didn’t coexist. 

This didn’t leave Wally with many options, but he still had a few. 

Wally glanced around the city. It was dark earlier these days, with the seasons changing and growing colder. Recuperating at the Rogues and then tracking down the Network had taken longer than he'd preferred. In this part of town, there weren't a lot of people walking around late at night. The area was sparsely lit by streetlights and almost completely silent. Checking just to make sure no one was watching, Wally sprinted off, tapping into his speed but not so fast that he'd obliterate his sneakers within the first few blocks of running, and by the time he reached Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry's neighborhood, they were only slightly beginning to falling apart, the soles flapping under his feet and the laces hanging on by threads. 

He checked the windows of their home and that most of the few rooms inside that were lit were empty. A peek through the living room curtains showed no signs of a wheelchair, but he caught sight of his backpack, all of his belongings laid out, and Wally was suddenly relieved he hadn’t kept his “work clothes” inside.

He couldn't find any sign of people in the living room, but from the angle of the window, he spotted movement in the dimly lit kitchen. 

Running over to the front door on the patio, Wally knocked on the door, two gentle taps before he gave into his impatience and started almost constantly tapping at the door. He didn't stop until he heard the faint and muffled “I'm coming!” from inside. It was his Aunt Iris who opened the door for him. 

She stared at Wally, who felt a slight, frightened smile growing on his face. 

“Wally!” she exclaimed in surprise.

“...Hi, Aunt Iris,” he said when she wrapped him up in a hug. Ow.

“Don't you  _hi_  me,” Aunt Iris said angrily when she let go, luckily not noticing his wince. She grabbed him by his forearm and dragging him inside, closing . “You were  _missing_  and you ran right into Central's worst criminals on  _purpose_  and you worried  _everybody_  with your stupid, stupid stunt.” Wally felt his throat clench up at the sound of his aunt beginning to choke up. 

“I'm sorry, Aunt Iris,” he said quickly, but she cut him off.

“Don't,” she said, rubbing her nose. “Your mother, she was  _so_  worried, and you had the nerve to get... to get  _kidnapped_ , and I can't believe you think you can just waltz back in here. And good god, did you  _walk_  all the way back from god knows where? Mary? Mary! It's—”

“Wally!” 

Wally felt his throat constrict at the sight of his mother, with disheveled hair and red eyes, as she pushed herself up on the table, on shaky legs that should've still been resting in her wheelchair. She started walking over, using the dinner table to support most of her weight, but Wally didn't wait for her to reach the end of the table to reach him, striding over and hugging her, pulling weight off her feet and ignoring the pain on his back. 

“I'm sorry, Mom,” he said, holding onto her, remembering the day  _she_  had disappeared and how hellish it had been for him, waiting to hear word of her fate. Sorting out the issues with the Rogues and taking advantage of the current events to meet Amunet Black of the Network had been necessary, but Wally had never wanted to put his mom in the same situation he had been in at the time of the Weather Wizard's fiasco. “I'm  _so_  so—”

“Just  _don't_ ,” she scolded, sounding upset enough to slap him but settling for holding onto him and squeezing him with all of the strength in her arms.

Wally held his mom up for a moment, enjoying the feeling of closeness that he, regrettably, found hard to capture without these terrifying, heat of the moment situations, and in the background, he heard his aunt picking up the phone to call Uncle Barry, presumably to tell him that the Flash didn't need to search for Wally anymore. He had found his own way home. 

Finally, he moved, slowly stepping towards the closest chair and helping his mother back the seat.

“I'm sorry for worrying you,” he said with all the sincerity he had. 

“Don't be sorry, just don't do it again,” she said.

He gave her another tight hug and didn't say anything, because he couldn't make that kind of promise to her, not with his other life and the risk that one day, its complexities would overload and he wouldn't be able to keep its business in a neat little box in the corner where it wouldn't affect the rest of his life. Because he had to face the facts: his separate lives were already irreparably mixed with each other the day he got his powers in the first place.

Wally closed his eyes and sighed. Hunter. Rogues. Network. Now family. It was another milestone completed and a weight off his chest. They weren't worrying about him anymore. He didn't want to scare them like that. 

“Are you okay?” Aunt Iris asked, placing a hand on his arm, considerably gentler this time. “You look all beaten up.”

Wally instinctively drew back, worried that if she got any closer, she’d get too good a look and insist on checking him out for injuries.

He was tired, but hardly in the mood to sleep. Hungry too. The peanut butter made for a good and quick energy boost but it was hardly satisfying, as far as his appetite went. He could go up to his room and fix both, snack in bed with his stash of bread he kept under the couch, but as appealing as it was, he still had one last thing to do.

“Did anyone find my backpack?” he asked. Iris paused and quickly backed off. 

“On the coffee table,” Mary said, wheeling herself toward the door. Wally followed after her and started pushing the wheelchair from behind, but she turned around and gave him a  _look_  of disapproval that told him it was her job to coddle him, and Wally smiled, letting go of the handles to let her move about on her own. She wasn't the quiet, soft-spoken woman from his memories, and while it had been a little jarring at first, realizing that she seemed stronger, more personable in Rudy's absence left him feeling... happy. The stern look made him feel as if he was a better person without his father too, regardless of his current career choice, and her disapproving look was a reminder that they were growing past that awkwardly polite phase.

Wally bit back a grin. How weird was it that he felt so comfortable being scowled at? He could blame his father for that one—or, maybe, the day's events. Everything had felt so stressful earlier, something as mundane as his mom refusing to be babied by her own son made him feel airy and light. 

“Are you going to take a day off school tomorrow?” she asked him as he looked at his belongings, going through them to make sure none of his work was missing or broken, and putting it back in his backpack, which rested beneath the coffee table. 

“I have a choice?” he replied. 

“No,” his mom said with a warm smile. It was another reminder of how different she was from Rudy, who hadn't cared about any of the times he had skipped school, whether he was sick from his superspeed experiment or sulking after a particularly bad day. 

He leaned over her and gave her another hug.

The angle wasn't ideal, but it still wasn't nearly as awkward as it had been several months ago, and Wally was sure they hadn't been this close with each other since arriving in Central or even since her and Rudy's divorce.

Hunter probably would have had something to say about that. How the wheelchair had forced Wally to bend to her needs and how his sense of familial obligation had helped reawaken a normal mother-son relationship or something. Something deep and a little gooey. As gruff as he was, when examining interpersonal relationships, Hunter could be like a deep-dish pizza—outer crust fried hard and crunchy and totally cheesy on the inside.

Wally mentally pushed aside his lingering sense of longing at the thought. It was too late to make a quick run to Illinois for some genuine Chicago-style pizza, and he had a call to make.

“Who are you calling?” Aunt Iris asked when he picked up his cell phone. 

“Hunter,” Wally answered as he dialed his number from memory, and Aunt Iris and his mom exchanged looks that made Wally nervous, as if they had just ran over his puppy and didn't want to tell him about it. “I don't want him to worry. He gets really  _grumpy_.”

Mary looked like she wanted to say something, but she held herself back as Wally pressed the phone up to his ear. The first two tries, he got voicemail, but on the third, Hunter finally picked up. 

“Hey?” Wally tried. “It's me, Wally.”

“I know. Your number’s registered on my phone,” Hunter replied. The sarcasm is a little more dull and flat than he's used to, even by deadpan standards, but Wally could attribute that to just being tired. “I see you're all right.”

“Yep,” Wally said. 

“Yeah, Barry just called to let me know.”

“Oh. Right. Didn't think about that.” The conversation was beginning to feel oddly stilted. Hunter generally gave off a vibe that made him a little difficult to approach, but he'd never been curt with Wally before, and Wally couldn't help but feel as if Hunter was mad about something. “So we don’t have to take the bus home tomorrow too, do we?” he asked a little jokingly. 

“No,” Hunter said with the usual seriousness and tired patience he usually reserved for when they were forced to wait in line at their favorite Chinese takeout restaurant. “You should just go straight home tomorrow.”

“You don’t need help carrying your books and stuff?” Wally asked. 

“I had a backpack. I didn’t really need you,” Hunter said, and then, maybe realizing how harsh that was, he tried to alleviate the blow with a quick, “I just... liked your company.”

It didn’t really help Wally feel any better if Hunter was basically saying he didn’t anymore. As far away as the afternoon felt, Hunter had been waiting for him outside of his classroom to surprise Wally and head out together only hours ago. Hunter’s sudden distance hit Wally like whiplash. As distant as that afternoon felt, he'd only just had Hunter waiting for him outside of his classroom to surprise him and head out together. 

After a beat of silence, Wally stepped up to fill it in, only for Hunter to speak up at the same time. “Thanks—?”

“Actually—” They both stopped, waiting for the other to continue. Hunter was first to try again. “Actually, I did kind of need you today. I mean, it probably would’ve gone a lot better if…” Hunter’s voice trailed off, leaving the sentence hanging as he regathered his thoughts and tried a third time. “Well, you saved my life,” he said through gritted teeth. “To be honest, you shouldn’t have had to, but you did.”

“Well, I guess I'll see you tomorrow at school then.”

The sharp scoff he heard on the other end came unexpectedly, so low and quiet that Wally almost missed it. “Maybe,” Hunter finally said, and Wally didn't wait for him to add on anything else, quickly saying goodbye and hanging up.

He did his best to ignore the odd, worried glances his mom and aunt were giving him, trying to focus all his attention on the screen of his phone. He felt numb, unsure of whether the conversation actually happened, despite the information provided to him on the phone. 

“What did he say...?” his aunt asked.

“I guess he, um...” His throat clenched again. He wasn't going to lie. That exchange actually kind of hurt. “...I guess he wasn't as worried as I thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Oh god, how did we get to the end so fast? Anyway, as customary, I'll be taking a month off, give or take a few weeks, to play catch up. I'm actually really kind of distraught because I've fallen _way_ behind on writing.
> 
> And sorry I missed updating yesterday. I must've been really tired because I totally had my days wrong and for some reason thought today was Wednesday instead! This chapter was pretty painful for me to write just--I didn't like it but didn't know how to fix it. Like, the general mood. It just didn't feel very relieved to me? Or maybe it was just too thick or... or something. How some things felt automatically resolved didn't help either, but since I cut down on some of the later plots that I once had planned (because, seriously, I think I have enough!) I ended up just keeping this part at the bare minimum. If that makes sense. I'm kind of exhausted. Like, I remember editing this part and feeling dissatisfied with the scene and then adding back in an old plot I'd thought of where Iris got to have a bigger role in the story and looked into what happened with Wally, but that added in waaaay too much to the story, especially considering the fact that I found a way I could recreate the same results of that subplot into an existing scene. Sooo after adding to this chapter, I cut everything back out again, and it was kind of a waste of time overall. Not a total waste, but not very productive either. Hopefully, I can get more work done, because my schedule's kind of been loaded recently.
> 
> In any case, when I come back, WE'RE FINALLY GOING TO BE MOVING ON TO NEW MATERIAL. AREN'T YOU EXCITED???


End file.
